


we are not afraid (and we are not ashamed)

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Dubious Consent, Foursome - M/M/M/M, M/M, Mpreg, Sibling Incest, Something Made Them Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 11:59:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12320661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: An ordinary skirmish in the desert with dracs leads to Frank taking the brunt of a new weapon - and ends with him pregnant, furious, and freaking out. When the shit hits the fan and he gets kidnapped and taken back for interrogation by Korse, and forced to listen to the contents of the Traffic Report, something in himsnaps. This fucking dystopia has gone on too long.





	we are not afraid (and we are not ashamed)

**Author's Note:**

> Another one written with the encouragement of LadySmutterella - and it comes with a complementary fanmix from her as well, as part of Bandom Big Bang!
> 
> You can find it [here on Dreamwidth](https://lady-smutterella.dreamwidth.org/6042.html) or [here on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/immoralcrow/playlist/7EXMl5XSM9K8M1aSF5W0mf) and you should check it out because it's FABULOUS.

It's interesting, in a shitty kind of way, that some things actually get easier after the bombs drop.

For one thing, Frank's quote unquote dietary requirements stop being a logistical problem. The only thing there is to eat is tins of Power Pup, pretty much, and that's 100% created, somehow, somewhere, from things that were never grown or harvested or, importantly, slaughtered. If animal protein is still being eaten by anyone, it isn't the godforsaken shitheaps stuck out here in the zones. 

Everyone's pretty much functionally vegetarian now, which kinda makes Frank laugh. He's the only one who doesn't complain about the constant diet of canned crap, because it's not like he didn't used to spend three quarters of every tour living off nothing but fucking diner fries. Power Pup is at least a roughly balanced diet even if it's entirely fake. And not technically 'for human consumption'.

The others miss meat - Frank misses the taste of tomatoes, or the texture of noodles and crisp snowpeas, or the weird infrequent joy of actually finding something chocolate flavoured he could eat. The others probably do miss shit like that too, but it's the bacon they talk about. 

Frank's in the process of scraping out the bottom of tonight's tin of kibble when Ray's suddenly doing the meerkat pose. 

Fuck. 

Engines rumble, over the weak noises of wind in the dunes. Frank and the others are on their feet in nothing flat. 

'Time to run?' Ray says, reaching for his helmet. 'Mikey, if you and I -'

'Too close,' says Mikey, words clipped as always. 'Won't get up to speed.'

Out here, if you're not fast, you die. It's a lesson they've all had to learn, fortunately not first-hand. 

Gerard's lurched into the front seat of the Trans Am, fiddling with the radio. He already has his gun out, resting on the sill of the door as he fights with the static, trying to listen in. He glares at them. 'Use the fucking codenames; if we can hear them coming, they're in range.'

Frank, Ray and Mikey all find the time, somehow, to roll their eyes, but Gerard has a point. If their faces weren't plastered all over fucking wanted posters everywhere, it'd be something Frank would fight about, but BL/ind have their wallet names, and okay, so the punishment for being a random zonerunner just trying to stay free is getting shot - the fabulous Killjoys are out to bring down the establishment, and the punishment for that is not something Frank even wants to think about. 

The first drac sticks its head up over a dune and gets two blasts straight to the face for its trouble - Ray's kicked sand over their pitiful little fire by now so the only light that isn't the weak-ass moon above them is from the headlights of whatever vehicles the dracs have brought with them, and that silhouettes them beautifully for headshots. There's fuck-all places to stand your ground and live, out here in the desert, but turns out Mikey has a talent for scouting them out. It's one of the reasons they've lived this long. 

Three more dead dracs, and then one of them is smart enough to turn off their fucking lights and it turns into a short, brutal fight in the dark. Frank's in the thick of it, bouncing off enemies, taking them down as hard and as fast as he can, keeping an eye out for the other boys - Mikey with his visor down and his hands flashing left and right, Ray all muscle and hair and scary accurate shooting from the hip, Gerard sniping from his car, still trying to get signal on what the fuck is going on, if the dracs have reinforcements, if Korse is heading this way, and yet managing to pick off enough of the bad guys to keep things manageable in the melee. 

Frank looks up at one point and the muzzle flash of someone's gun illuminates the scraggly edges of this sand bowl they're scrapping in, and he sees three dracs wrestling some new kind of ray gun, something he hasn't seen before, into position. Frank follows the direction it's pointed, in the split second of light he has, and it's straight at the Trans Am. 

Straight at Gerard.

Motherfucking _no_. 

It doesn't even - it's not even a decision. Frank hits the driver's side of the Trans Am with a slam, bowling Gerard sideways - something hits him, and everything goes black. 

***

Frank comes to hot and sweating and blind, at least until he moves and realises he's got his face mashed into Ray's neck. They're driving, and Gerard must have his foot to the fucking floor because every bump they hit is unforgiving. 

There are hands on him and they're freezing where they touch bare skin, the hem of his shirt and the ends of his sleeves and over his collar, but it's the good kind of cold, because the rest of him feels like it's about ready to combust. 

'We've gotta find some water,' says Ray, and his palm brushes over Frank's forehead, stops there. Frank twists to get more touch, moans a little bit because _god_ that coolness feels good. 'He's burning up, guys, this is serious.'

'We know it's fucking serious,' says Mikey from the front seat. Frank cracks an eye open and blinks. Mikey's staring at him in the rearview. 'Look, just keep him steady, we gotta find a place to crash and then we can sort - Gee, there, left, left, fucking _left_ -'

Gerard spins the wheel and the car veers wildly off into the dunes again. Frank muzzily groans thinking about all the fucking dust he's gonna have to hoick out of her suspension next time they get the opportunity to put her up on blocks. Ray ssshhhes at him softly, cards the hair back off his face like he's soothing a child. Frank wriggles into the hard bulk of Ray's body, and Ray's other arm curls around his waist. 

His fingertips, still hard and scratchy, find the soft skin of that place that's not quite belly, not quite hip, where Frank's shirt has ridden up, and Frank shudders, squirms harder into Ray. 

'Frank?' Ray says softly, confused. Frank shakes his head and rolls his body, trying to get closer, closer and closer. He feels sick and hot and the only thing that makes any sense is touch. 'Hey, buddy,' Ray murmurs, holding tighter. 'Hey, I got you.'

He's still being comforting, calm, but it can't have escaped him by now that Frank's rubbing a massive freaking hard-on against his hip.

'C'mon, Ray,' Frank hisses, fumbling for Ray's hand, the one that's still fussing around with Frank's hair. 'Fucking, _c'mon_ -'

'What's - is he awake?' Gerard says from the driver's seat, sounding frantic as the Trans Am ricochets and bounces over the washboarded sand. 'Frank? Frank, talk to me dude -'

'He's awake,' says Ray in an even higher pitched voice than usual. This is probably because Frank's basically clamped his big, wide, freakishly talented hand over Frank's dick. Frank is not here to fuck around, okay, it's not like Ray hasn't been on this ride before and Frank wants so hard he _hurts_. 'He's, uh -'

'Pull over, Gerard,' Frank growls. 

'Oh fuck,' says Mikey, like he just got clued into something bad. 'Oh, for fuck's - yeah, pull over, Gee. Shit.'

'What? What shit? Pull over _where_ , Mikes, there's nowhere to -'

'Fucking anywhere,' Mikey says. Ray's finally got with the program and is stroking Frank through his pants but fuck that noise, Frank wants skin, so he's fighting his own zipper around Ray's fingers. 'Here. Just, fuck, kill the fucking engine.'

Gerard does what he's told, but the second he cuts the throttle and the only noise is breathing and the jangle of the shit he keeps dangling from the keyring, he's moving, hanging over the backseat so he can look at Frank and Ray. 'Someone tell me what the fuck is going on right the fuck now,' he says, tight and flat and furious. 

Ray says, breathlessly, 'I don't know but he's really goddamn horny,' at the same time as Mikey mutters something that sounds like 'mumble mumble x-ray'

Frank's eyes roll back in his head. Ray's so goddamn good with his hands, fuck. He doesn't fucking _care_ what the other two are talking about as long as Ray just keeps doing what he's doing. 

'I'm sorry what?' says Gerard, somewhere far, far away from everything important, because everything right now revolves around Frank's body, he feels like a black hole, like he's pulling, like he's hungry and he craves and Ray gets it, Ray gets him, Ray always gets him, sometimes on stage Frank could have sworn they could read each other's minds and it's like that now, because Ray's pulling off Frank's shirt, rucking up his own, and dragging Frank to sprawl lazy in his lap, chest to chest, skin to skin, with Ray's magic fucking hands in between them. 

Then Gerard says 'motherfucking _sex-ray_ -?' so loud Frank can't help but hear it even over all the steaming static noise in his head that's telling him lube or no lube he needs to get up on Toro's dick right the fuck now. He fights Ray, fights hard, shoves his pants down his thighs and rears up to try and get -

'No, Frank, Jesus, you can't just - Frank _no_ , quit it -' Ray's flies are undone because Frank is a fucking genius multitasker even when he's off his head and Frank's gonna fucking get fucked come hell or high water but Ray's just not getting with the program. He wraps his arms around Frank's waist and holds him up and away from his cock. 'I'm not gonna - you'll hurt yourself, Jesus Christ, Frankie -'

'I need it,' Frank pants. No matter how hard he fights he just doesn't have the body mass or like, limb-length or whatever, to have leverage on Ray, and he knows it, so he goes for weapon number two - big soft fluttery eyes. 'Please, Ray, c'mon, I just, I _need_ it, man.'

'I need reinforcements,' says Ray over the top of Frank's head and yes, mm, yeah, good idea Ray, this is a big back seat and they could totally get Gerard and Mikey in here too, fuck, that would be so good, all of them packed in tight together -

\- except what happens is Mikey opens the back passenger side door fast like a fucking snake and drags Frank out by the scruff of his neck and hands him over to Gerard, and now Frank has to start the getting-at-cock part all over again except it's _worse_ because Gerard's basically laced into his stupid fucking skintight jeans and thigh-holster, Christ, and Frank can barely scoot his fingertips under the edge of Gerard's pants without Gerard cooperating, which he _isn't_ because he's a fucking _asshole_ and Frank's hurting, man, he's aching like he's been beaten black and blue and he just, he just - 

Gerard wraps himself around Frank, pinning his arms and smothering him in the smell of gasoline and sweat and hair dye. 'Hey, ssh, ssshh,' he's murmuring, over and over again, as Ray slides out of the Trans Am doing his belt up and looking … Jesus, why the fuck did they stop, Ray was clearly fucking on board, what a fucking _waste_ -

'I thought she was kidding, or … or wrong or something,' Mikey's saying urgently to Ray. 'I thought the intel must have been garbled, or someone at BL was just, I dunno, fucking spreading bullshit rumours to try and misdirect us, or. Fuck. I didn't think it was _real_ , I swear to God.'

'It doesn't matter now,' Ray says, crossing his arms in front of him and biting his lip. 'Just tell me what you know. Okay? How long does it last? Are we gonna be able to wait it out here, or does he need some kinda antidote, or -'

Frank tries to be quiet, he does, he gets that this is a new situation and they need to work it through, but it's not just him being a drama queen, okay, he fucking _hurts_ , and it's getting worse, the only places he doesn't feel like one solid bruise are the slivers of his skin where his shirt's messed up and Gerard's forearms are hooked around him, and the tiny spot on his neck where Gerard's soft, chapped mouth is pressed up against him, as he watches Ray and Mikey have their confab and hangs on to Frank for all he's worth. Frank can feel Gerard thrumming against him and normally he'd be a hundred percent in favour of that but right now it just ratchets the tension in his own body higher, higher, uncomfortably tight. 

He can't help the sob that breaks out when Gerard straightens and pulls his lips away, because the loss of even that little bit of contact is like a fresh fucking slap. 

'Frankie?'

Frank turns in Gerard's hold til he can mash his face into Gerard's red-stained, sweat-slick throat. 'Hurts,' he whines. 'Please, Gee.'

'What?' Gerard asks. His adam's apple bobs under Frank's cheek when he swallows, like he's nervous. 'What do you want, Frank?'

'Fuck me. God, please, fuck me, I need you to fuck me,' he's pulling at Gerard's jacket, desperate and not successful, but Gerard still isn't moving, isn't giving him an inch. 

'He's right, Gee,' says Mikey, after a too-long beat. 'That thing they shot him with, it's messing him up. Show Pony said her contacts were talking, like ... Something … I dunno dude, it was all medical and shit. It sounded fucking bad, okay? Like, heart failure, brain aneurysm bad.'

'I'm not just gonna -'

'Not like it'll be the first time,' Mikey points out, flat and quiet.

Frank, shivering, wants to point out it wouldn't be the first time for any of them. It's easier to get through a long night on watch, or waiting for someone to get back from a scouting or supply run, when there's someone beside you. Gerard and Mikey and Ray, Frank's been with all of them and he knows they've done the same - well, maybe not Gerard and Mikey, maybe … (Frank wonders, sometimes) but fucking so what if they had? 

It's been a long, hard few years, and the only good thing they have left is each other.

So he doesn't get what everyone's fucking pussyfooting around for. He wants to say it, he wants to say it really freaking bad, but his tongue is thick in his mouth and all of his brain is in his dick, dry-humping Gerard's unresponsive hip, and he can't force the words out. 

'We can go,' says Ray, awkwardly. 'If you -'

Fuck no. 

Frank flails an arm behind him and catches Ray's shirt. 'No leaving,' he says, wrenching til Ray's forced to step up close or let Frank ruin his clothes. 'Where's Mikey?' he adds, because there's still too much space around him, he wants to rip all their clothes off and roll around between their bodies until there isn't a single fucking half a millimetre of his skin that isn't being touched. 

'Okay seriously, whoa, time out for a second,' says Gerard in a strangled voice. He clamps himself harder around Frank so he can't keep reeling Ray in. 'We're not doing this, right?'

'Gerard -' 

'Guys. We can't fucking do this. Look at him, for Christ's sake,' Gerard tries to gesture down at Frank, Frank can feel it in the way his body moves, but that means Gerard lets up the boa constrictor act and Frank takes his moment, finally gets his fingers on the zipper of Gerard's fly. 

'Frank, _no_ -' Gerard snarls, like a panicked animal, and he lets go of Frank so fast Frank falls over. His knees hit the dirt, he's boiling, he's freezing, no touch, no skin any more, not even through fabric, and his head explodes in agony, a migraine like he hasn't had in years tearing through his skull without any warning, and he probably makes a noise or something but he can't hear it over the pounding in his ears as he doubles over and curls into a knot, trying to escape the pain. 

Then it's gone, as fast as it hit, and he blinks his watering eyes open to find Mikey cupping his face in his hands. 

'- get what you're saying, Gee, but I dunno, I feel like the agonised fucking screaming means something,' he's saying, back over his shoulder at his brother.

Ray drops to the sand next to Frank and hooks an arm around his shoulder, hauls until Frank's sprawled over his lap. 'We gotta figure this out,' he says, in his soft, calm Ray voice. 'If that means a goddamn group hug while we talk, fine. Get your ass over here, Gerard. And you,' he says, looking down at Frank, 'keep your hands to yourself, okay?'

Mikey folds himself up like origami on Frank's other side, and after a second Gerard sits too, in range enough to reach out almost like he's fucking shy and put a hand on Frank's ankle, over his jeans. 

Having all three of them this close makes Frank want to purr, but shit, the jolt of pain before has at least cleared his head. He came so close to - Christ. He folds himself up tighter, hands tucked up into his armpits so he can clamp them down. It doesn't matter how much it hurts, or he wants - he can't, he won't, he fucking _will not_ use his friends like that. 

Gerard's talking, and Frank tunes in on it and realises that he's missed a whole fucking chunk of conversation while he was busy seizing or whatever was happening with the pain in his head. '- able to fucking consent, asshole.'

'Not like he's catatonic, Gee,' Mikey says in that low, toneless voice that means he hates what he's saying but he's gonna say it anyway. Used to be he just wouldn't say anything at all, but these days you don't hold shit back in case silence now gets you killed later, or the person you froze out today doesn't come back tomorrow. 'Dunno about you but I'd rather … fuck.' He shakes his head, fringe flopping in his face. Frank wants so bad to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, but he can't risk touching and not being able to stop. He's safer here, curled into Ray's side. 'I'm not kidding, Gerard, Pony was talking deaths. Plural. She was freaked, man, and just now? Watching that? I'm fucking freaked too. If you won't do it, I'll give him what he wants, out of his head or not.'

He bites his lip, Mikey does, pink going white then springing back red when he lets it go. 'And if he hates me in the morning, if he wants to take a swing, fuck, if he wants to fucking shoot me, I'll take it. Better than … y'know?'

His voice is shaking. Mikeyfuckingway, who acts like getting caught showing an emotion is worse than getting caught with your pants down, his voice is shaking. Over Frank. Who's shaking too, but different, worse, gross, because he's aching and sweating and even now he has to fight himself not to reach out.

'It'll -' Frank says, but his voice is scratchy and raw, and he chokes on the next word. He works his throat frantically to try and get enough moisture back to talk. 'It'll be okay,' he says, hoarse. 'Fuck, I'm sorry. I'm trying,' he says, and he almost laughs, but it dies in his throat. 'You don't have to. I'm not asking. I'll take care of it myself,' he says, because he figures, maybe jacking off will work? He can at least _try_.

'I wanna try an experiment,' says Ray. 'Gerard, Mikey, let go of him, okay?'

They do as they're told, and Frank aborts the whine that kindles in his chest before it can make it out loud. Gerard's fingers unwrapping from his ankle, Mikey's warmth retreating from his side, they feel like bits of him getting cut off. 

Then Ray pulls away, just for a split of a fucking second, and -

'- yeah no, fuck that,' says Ray, wrapping Frank, aching, shaking, breaking, back up in a bear hug. 'One of you start a goddamn fire, we're camping here tonight.'

***

Frank wakes up in the middle of the night running a fever and humping someone's leg. Fuck, shit, he's gotta - he tries to pull himself back, stop his rabbiting hips, but it's so hard, he's so hard, and whoever it is if they're asleep they'll never know, right? All the mess'll be in Frank's pants and - no. Fucking - _no_ Frank, that's not okay -

He bites his lip so hard he can feel it start to puff up, and forces himself to stop moving. But a hand comes up to tangle in his too-long hair, another wraps gently around his hipbone, and Gerard whispers, 'Frank? It's okay, Frankie.' 

Frank whimpers and buries his face in Gerard's neck, and doesn't move. 'I'm so fucking sorry,' he says. 'But they were aiming at you and I just -'

'Took a fucking bullet for me again, huh Frank?' Gerard pulls gently at Frank's hip til he's moving again, rocking his iron-hard dick against Gerard's thigh. 'You gotta stop doing that.'

There may have been an incident or two. Frank may have a blast scar. Or two. It's not a big deal.

'Shit, you're burning up,' Gerard says a second later, his voice tight and scared, when he stops playing with Frank's hair and lays his hand on Frank's forehead instead.

And yeah, Frank's head has been pounding, but it eases the second Gerard's clammy palm settles there. 'Feels better when you -' he mumbles, hitching his hips desperately. Maybe if he just finally gets off this will all go away, will all have been a terrible fucking nightmare and nothing more. 

'When I touch you?' Gerard says softly. 

They're in the middle of the pile - Frank's got Mikey up against his back, all long bones and pleather and sweat, and Ray's on Gerard's other side. Neither of them is asleep, not anymore, and Frank hates that, hates that he woke them, that he couldn't just keep his shit to himself. 'You don't have to,' he says, and it sounds weak and fake even to him.

Gerard reaches down and undoes Frank's fly, but it's Mikey, rolling over fully and little-spooning Frank, that slides his hand inside. Gerard smiles tightly at his brother over Frank's head. 

Frank shakes, tries to still himself again because they shouldn't, they don't have to do this, he doesn't want to wake up from this and realise that none of them will ever look him in the eye again - 

'Get his pants open,' says Ray, leaning up over Gerard, in the tone of voice that used to go with 'hey, try tuning down a half-step' or 'what if we ended it on the minor, and just, like, let it hang?'

Between them, Mikey and Gerard ease Frank's belt open properly and work his jeans down off his ass, while Ray shuffles round and pulls Frank's head into his lap. In the dying firelight he looks intense, like he used to look under stagelights. Fuck. Frank would follow Ray Toro anywhere. 

'Actually, you guys too,' Ray says, when they finish, and, 'Like, shirts off, and shit. That's what you want, right Frank? That's what stops it hurting. It's skin.' He smooths his hand, still rough, more from heavy equipment and dry desert air than from steel strings these days though, down Frank's face, down his neck, til he can tuck it under the collar of Frank's shirt against his chest, nearly over his heart. 'Better?'

And yeah, it is. They can't get naked, because they're out in the open, because ambushes, and because fucking sand fucking everywhere, but Mikey peels the shirt up over Frank's head and Frank realises Mikey's shed his jacket and rucked up his own shirt so his bare belly's pressing against Frank's spine, and now he's got Gerard's thigh between his knees, Gerard's fly wide open, and Ray's hands are big and kind on Frank's face, scratching softly through his hair. 

Frank's brain is gonna melt out of his ears. He's been hurting so long now that the way the pain melts away everywhere they're pressed against him is making him fucking high, giddy, and he nuzzles at Ray's hand til he finds his fingers and can suck them into his mouth. 

'Jesus,' says Gerard softly, and he pulls Frank into him closer, so they're hard up against each other. Mikey moves with them, cock pressing against Frank's ass framed by the worn denim of his jeans, and both hands stroking down his chest. 'C'mon, Frankie, we got you. You can let it go,'

And for a moment, Frank thinks he does - his body jerks, with Mikey and Gerard's hands around his dick and Ray petting him, and for a second, just a second, he feels amazing, but the follow-through never comes. He doesn't come. His body locks up like it's going to happen but all there is is desperation and ache, and he tries so hard to calm down, to come down from it, but he stays hard and desperate, like nothing's changed at all. 

He only realises he's got tears in his eyes when Gerard wipes at them. 'Hey,' he says. 'It's okay, Frankie.'

'No it fucking isn't,' Frank says through his gritted teeth.

No-one tries arguing with him. He buries his face in Gerard's neck and knows the others are having a conversation in eyebrow and twitched-lip and meaningful headshakes around him. He wriggles, twitchy like a junkie and remembering when the cigarettes ran out, when the coffee ran out, the beer, the non-BL/ind cans, the _water_ \- he craves now like he craved then and he shoves himself back against Mikey's dick and pulls Gerard with him to try and sate the hungry thing inside him. He's being rough, he knows he is, but throwing himself around is the only way he's ever known to keep himself from crashing to the ground.

So fucking gently Frank could scream, Gerard leans down and fits his mouth against Frank's, and kisses him. It's delicate and careful and a million miles from the few bouts of rough, hurried frotting they've managed since the bombs fell, maybe a million more miles on top of that from the way they used to kiss on stage. Frank still falls apart under it, though. 

As soon as Gerard eases back, it's like a dam breaks. 'Please,' Frank mumbles, because he can't choke it back any more. 'Fuck me, someone fuck me, I can't - I don't know how much longer I can ...'

'Hey,' says Ray, still petting Frank's face, when the trailed off silence goes on too long and still no-one's said anything. _Gerard_ hasn't said anything. 'We're gonna take care of you, okay, Frank?'

But Gerard's squirming away. 'Doctor D will be on the air by now,' he says, pulling back, leaving Frank shuddering against Mikey. 'I gotta find out -' 

Frank gasps like he's been gut-shot the second Gerard finally pulls free and disappears round the back of the Trans Am, and Mikey immediately octopuses around him, rocking him like a baby as he sobs. Losing Gerard's warmth from against him is like having a fucking wound opened up. Ray kisses Frank's forehead and sits up against the back passenger's side wheel, pulling Frank to his knees, cradled up against his body, and Mikey behind, close as skin. 'You trust us, right?' Ray asks. 

'Not gonna do anything to hurt you,' Mikey says, smoothing his hands obsessively over Frank's spine, half massage, half tracing tattoos. 'Gee doesn't wanna hurt you either,' he adds quietly, leaning in to say it in Frank's ear and nudging his dick harder up against Frank's ass in the process. 'He's just. Y'know.'

Frank's so close to getting what he wants he's barely processing what they're saying, panting, head hanging down, knees spread as wide as he can force them with his jeans pinning his thighs together. 'God. _Please,_ Mikes,' he groans. 

There's the quiet sound of someone spitting but trying not to be loud and gross about it, and yeah, that's another thing they ran out of surprisingly fast: lube. Frank kind of doesn't fucking care though, he's aching to get dicked, feels like he could take anything, stupid, reckless, acting like the kind of idiot he hasn't been since he was nineteen and finally wasted enough and brave enough to fucking go and make a move on the dude he'd had a crush on for months and not care if he got punched somewhere along the way.

Mikey's fingers at his hole are wet and too careful, just like Gerard's kisses were, or the way Ray's got his hands curled around Frank's face. Frank shoves back into Mikey's touch and twists his head so that he can nip at Ray's palm, and Ray rolls his eyes at him, melodramatic in the very-nearly dark, and fists Frank's hair instead. 'Asshole,' he murmurs, but he says it sweet, nice, kind, the way he always talks to Frank. 

Mikey gets with the program properly, though, always does - him and Frank, they tune into each other fast. He knows the rhythm Frank wants, reads him too good, and Frank's got no complaints about that. But he wants more, more, more, arches his back until Mikey finally pulls his fingers free and lines up his dick. 

The feel of it, the pressure, is so _good_ it makes Frank's eyes roll back in his fucking head. Yes, god yes, yes, yes, _yes_ \- and he only realises he's saying it out loud when Ray pulls his head back by the hair and tells him to quiet down. He wrenches his head down and forward, collapses down onto his elbows, not caring if he loses a few strands of hair, and buries his face in Ray's hip, so close to his hot, hard cock still trapped in his zipped up jeans, and muffles the noises that way because fucked if he can stop them, not when it feels this good. 

Mikey's a good lay, always been a good lay. He wraps himself around Frank, leaning into him and fucking him with punishing rolls of his hips, not pulling out at all, just riding Frank's ass hard and with his mouth against Frank's neck, panting hotly. He reaches down and fists Frank's cock, and Frank bites down on the denim of Ray's jeans and whines. 

He wants to come so bad, so fucking bad, and he keeps getting shudders of it, the fucking thrill you get when you know you're gonna lose it, but he never does, it never happens, his dick twitches and his spine locks, his ass clenches desperately around Mikey's cock and he's fucking crying into Ray's fucking jeans because he's rock hard and burning hot and he. Can't. Come. 

'Fuck, Frankie, shit, I'm gonna -' Mikey wheezes into Frank's ear, his hand flying over Frank's stupid dick even though it's clearly not doing a damn thing, and he unloads into Frank's ass with a final thrust so hard it shoves Frank basically into Ray's arms. Oh, fucking christ, it feels amazing, Mikey's sloppy-slick twitching cock inside him, but Frank's still desperate, dying for a fix he's starting to think he'll never get. 

'Switch places with me,' says Ray softly, and thank god, thank fucking god for Ray and Mikey, because they know what he needs. They don't let up on touching him the whole time they're moving, hands trailing over his skin like he's a horse they're trying not to spook, and Ray doesn't hesitate, just pulls himself free of his pants and spreads Frank open with his thumbs and pushes in. 

Frank's arms give out and he lands with his face in Mikey's lap, but they pull him and coax him til he's kneeling, draped over Mikey, belly to belly and chest to chest with his cheek pillowed on Mikey's shoulder and Ray up behind him, fucking hard and slow. 

One of Mikey's hands is still on Frank's cock. The other is in his hair, and both of Ray's hands are on Frank's hips. 

So when someone traces their fingers down his spine slowly and apologetically, leaving a shivering feeling in their wake, Frank shocks out of the numb brainless aching pleasure he's been spiralling in. 

'I'm so fucking sorry, Frankie,' says Gerard softly. 

Frank can't make words any more, but he twists his head on Mikey's shoulder to look Gerard in the eye, panting, groaning, and Gerard leans down and kisses him on the corner of his mouth. 

'I can't,' says Ray, strained, over Frank's shoulder. His rhythm is shot to hell, he's pounding Frank so good but Frank can't tune into the erratic way he's moving now, all he can do is roll with it. 'I'm - shit, Gerard, you gotta take over,' Ray groans, and Frank's ass is fucking aching now, but his body goes fucking electric-shock hot when Ray starts coming, the pulse and shudder of him so goddamn familiar, but there's no echo of it for Frank, no orgasm at the end of the tunnel, and Mikey has to really hold him up now because he's boneless, hopeless, breathless as Gerard slides in where Ray slides out. 

Frank's so wet he feels like he could take anything, he could take two of them at once, he could take a fist, a fucking baseball bat, anything, he knows his body's twitching with a junkie's shiver and he lets Ray kiss him while Gerard fucks into the mess of Frank's ass. 

'Hey,' Ray says when Frank just can't any more, has to pull back because he's starting to get dizzy. 'I think your fever's breaking,' he says, putting the back of his hand to Frank's forehead. 'You feeling any better?'

Frank starts to laugh, grinds his face into Mikey's collarbone to try and shut himself up but he can't. His dick is hard as stone but he's given up. He's too tired, good for nothing any more except to get fucked. Mikey nuzzles into his hair, and Gerard's sprawled all over his back, juddering into him hungrily, and someone's hand is on his cock but they're not stroking any more, thank fuck, just holding him. 

He could sleep like this, maybe. God, sleep. With them all pressed up close, yes, fuck, someone inside him still, he could - 

'Is he close?' Gerard asks, groans, into Frank's shoulder. There's another hand on Frank's dick now, trying to jerk him, and he can't, no, he tries to get away from it because it hurts, too much, and Mikey shushes him softly, bats the other hand away. 

'Leave it,' he says, must be to Gerard. 'He's sore, he can't - just finish, Gee, he's fucking exhausted.'

'Fuck, fuck, fuck,' Gerard starts to wheeze into Frank's skin, over and over again, swearing a blue streak, hips jerking too hard into Frank's sensitive body. When he comes it's all Frank can do to not whine, he's so sore, it's so fucking unfair, why can't he just - and he wants Gerard out, wants the desperate, wide-spread ache to go away, but the second his ass is empty it starts to clench and he starts to whimper. 

'Hey, we got you,' says Ray, immediately pulling Frank into his arms again, sandwiching Frank between himself and Mikey. 'What do you need, Frank?'

Frank just hangs his head and tries to will the pain away. 

'Here,' says Gerard, and he's sprawled out on the blanket they'd kicked aside at some point, close to the grey-glowing remains of their fire. He opens his arms up. 'Give him - c'mere, Frankie.'

It's a blur after that, but they pile around him and someone works their cock back up his wet, sore ass and that helps, three sets of arms around him, his dick cradled in the crease of someone's hip, and someone kissing his neck, someone stroking the sweaty small of his back and he's full, blessedly fucking full, and that's how he falls asleep. 

***

Frank wakes up sore, and he wakes up in the middle of the pile of night-sweaty bodies of his friends, and he staggers upright to take a piss and makes it five wincing steps before he realises he's cold and he's moving, no-one's touching him but he's not, y'know, screaming in agony. Ray was right, his fever broke. 

He takes a leak somewhere off behind the Trans Am and scuffs dry sand over the wet with one shoe, and tries to ignore the mess in the back of his jeans, which someone very thoughtfully pulled up for him sometime in the night. But he does burrow straight back into the pile of comatose Killjoys, because desert mornings are too fucking cold. 

He watches as Gerard wakes up first, bleary-eyed and existentially pissed off at the world for still existing in the mornings even though he hasn't had a coffee in two and a half years. Gerard scratches his belly under his too-tight shirt, looking around, and then clearly realises he's not the only one awake.

'Frankie?' he whispers. 

'I'm good, Gee,' Frank whispers back. He feels like he owes Gerard something more, though, because there's still that wrinkle of worry between his brows, and he's biting his lip, so Frank wiggles forward a little bit and kisses him softly, just once on the mouth. 'Mean it,' he says. 'M'good.'

And for three days he is. 

On the fourth day, he hurls his guts up apropos of shit-all, four hours into the day's drive - Gerard has to pull over and Frank empties his entire breakfast into the hot sand and has to bury it, queasy and resentful, because he thought he was past this, he thought it was the one benefit of this brave new world they live in, that his stomachaches had gone away.

***

'I want a second opinion. He's not even a real doctor.'

'He is so a doctor,' says Show Pony, putting her hands on her hips. Frank looks up at her and wishes for once that he was taller. She looms over him. 

'Not that kind of doctor,' says Frank. He crosses his arms in front of him defensively. 'Also just fyi, I'm not hiding a uterus under all this khaki. I think I'd know by now, I think it would probably have announced itself at least once a fucking month for the last twenty years, so how, exactly, can I be pregnant?'

Pony shrugs. 'The wiretap caught something about 'tuned mutagenic effect' but it got garbled pretty quick. I think the ray does something to your cells?' She doesn't sound very sure. 

Frank puts a hand over his face for a second and tries to will some sense into the universe. 'I'm still not gonna go in there and let Doctor D put his sweaty cowboy hands all over me just because some idiot in another life gave him a fancy-ass piece of paper. Unless he can produce a fucking obstetrics diploma or whatever it is they give you to let you be a baby doctor, he's out, I'm going full fucking natural homeopathic communing with Gaia Moon Goddess hippie shit, okay? If this is even real. I still think it's trapped gas.'

'Fine,' she snarls right back at him. 'Good luck with your Caesarian section. I hear Kobra Kid has steady hands. He'll need them. For the scalpel. And the shovel afterwards to bury you with.'

Frank's about to say something he knows he'll regret when he realises how angry she is. She's seen it happen. Which - 

'How fucking long?' he asks, resisting the urge to grab her and shake her by the shoulders. 'How many -'

'Enough,' she says. 'Enough to have some fucking idea of what we're doing, okay? So will you get your stupid ass in there and at least let him look at you?'

It turns out Doctor D just wants him to pee on a stick. Frank gives in with what he likes to think is pretty good grace, because hell, that's a shitload better than what his hysterical imagination was telling him was going to happen in this shitty little wooden box that D uses as everything from a radio station to a bedroom. 

'You know what an ectopic pregnancy is?' he asks Frank after they've both looked at the results of about five peed-on sticks, all of which say the same thing.

'No.'

'It's what they did to you.' D shrugs. 'Happens every so often, baby attaches somewhere wrong. As in, somewhere not inside a uterus. And you don't _have_ a uterus, like you yelled at poor Pony out there, so this is pretty textbook.'

Frank bites his lip, worrying at the indent where there hasn't been a lip ring in nearly a decade. 'How does that even work?'

'Normally it doesn't, or at least, not for very long. But, uh. It can. If the fetus gets a blood supply.' D doesn't look very hopeful.

'Am I gonna die?' Frank asks.

'We're all gonna die, Fun Ghoul. Thought you knew that by now.'

'Fuck you, you nihilistic son of a bitch. Is _this_ gonna kill me?'

D tosses the pee sticks onto what passes for his desk and leans back in his chair, and sighs. 'Seen a few of these now,' he says. 'I'd say your odds are okay? Safer to stick it out than trying to get rid of it with the meds we still have, anyway. It sucks balls, kid, but fact is, with the equipment we got, I've got a better chance of removing it when it's bigger.'

Frank swallows hard. 'Like. Alive, or -'

'Too early to tell,' says D. 'But yeah. Let's hope for that, huh?'

'This doesn't make any fucking sense,' Frank says softly, rubbing his eyes and leaning against the wall. He feels like he's a million years old and made of leather, dried out and hollow on the inside. D always calls him 'kid', he calls everyone 'kid', but Frank's never felt less like one. 'It takes two people to make a baby.' 

He clamps down fucking fast on the knowledge that he wasn't the only person out there in the dunes that night, that he's not exactly the Virgin fucking Mary in this situation. But the point is two dudes should not be able to make a baby. Frank's pretty sure if that was possible someone would have done it by now. And even if they could, like .. there's a whole … the plumbing doesn't connect, okay? It doesn't matter how much Frank got fucked, no way can taking it up the ass end in a baby.

The way D's looking at him, he knows what Frank's thinking. 'Fucked if I know how they did it,' he says, 'but, uh. You know what parthenogenesis is?'

Frank gives him a sardonic look. D sighs. 'Whatever, doesn't fucking matter. Point is, you don't need two people, not like this. It's like cancer. It's runaway cell division. Just, somehow they've turned on the build-a-person instructions, not just the 'make more of the same kind of cells' ones. I don't even know if they did it deliberate, or if they just wanted to fuck up zonerunners, soften us up or something, and the .. y'know, the shit it does to your libido, then _this_ , was just a coincidental side effect.' He sighs deep. 'It's working, though. Fucking psychological warfare on top of everything else - it freaks people out.'

'Yeah you can pretty much put me down as 'freaked',' Frank says. The part of him that's always listening for engine note realises it can hear the Trans Am - the guys fucked off to give him some privacy, but they're coming back for him. 

D leans over and touches his elbow. 'You got a better shot than most of them,' he says. 'You got your boys. They'll look out for you.'

The Trans Am rumbles outside, then the engine cuts. Frank hears the slam of creaking metal doors. 'Gotta go,' he says, and his voice is too rough. He doesn't like it, and he doesn't like that he has to fight the urge to swipe at his watering fucking eyes. He turns for the door.

'Come back any time,' says D behind him. 'But hey, Fun Ghoul? I am a fucking medical doctor. Fuck you very much, kid.'

Frank's face splinters into a grin as he leaves.

***

Frank's the size of a house and he hates it.

'It's not that bad, dude,' says Mikey. 

They've holed up in an old gas station, half reclaimed by the sand, now that Frank's far enough along that he can't spend whole days cramped up in the Trans Am anymore. Mikey found the place - Mikey always finds them places - and it's as good a shitheap to hide in as any other place. Better, actually, because by some miracle it still has running water, pipes that didn't get fractured in the bombs and the earthquakes. The water is orange and the old washroom is full of peeling paint and weirdly undamaged EMPLOYEES WILL WASH THEIR HANDS - MANAGEMENT signs, and it's objectively gross, but Frank is so far past caring about gross it's almost funny. 

He stares at himself in a cracked, dusty mirror, rucks his shirt up and looks at the way his belly rounds out over his belt, and sighs. 'It's pretty bad. I'm like a land-whale.' 

It's only been a couple of months, too. Not like there was a lot of spare flesh on Frank for it to hide behind, though. He just wasn't expecting it to, like, _pop_ so fast. One morning he looked mostly like normal, the next morning suddenly he had this round little gut he had to pull his shirts down to cover.

Mikey meets Frank's eyes in the mirror and reaches out, then stops himself, like he was gonna touch but isn't sure he's allowed. It's not the first time Frank's caught him doing that, acting shy and fascinated. 

Frank sighs. 'Go on, then, if you wanna.'

Mikey bites his lip, steps up closer behind Frank, hooks his chin over Frank's shoulder. He hesitates, his hand hovering, but then settles his long, bony fingers over the curve of Frank's baby-belly, warm and dry and unexpectedly gentle. Frank shivers. 

Mikey strokes gently. 'Not a land-whale,' he says softly into Frank's neck. 'Jesus, Frank.'

'Have you seen my ankles?' Frank asks. 'Dude, I'm bloated, I need to pee like, every five seconds, my fucking libido is up and down like the Assyrian empire, I've got seventeen zits -'

'You're hot as fuck,' Mikey whispers. 'I wanna touch you so bad.'

Frank shivers. 'You are touching me,' he points out. 

Mikey growls. 'You know what I mean.' His other hand comes around Frank's body and spreads out over Frank's belly too, fingertips inching underneath Frank's waistband. 'I wish I could fuck you,' he says, gently rubbing at Frank's skin, caressing the heavy, rounded, sore shape of him.

Frank looks at him in the mirror, the way his eyes are hooded and downcast and sexual as he watches himself touch. 'Why don't you?' Frank asks, his voice rough and a little bit plaintive. It's not meant to be a come-on - just a question, an honest fucking question, because none of them have so much as hugged him since he came back from Doctor D's with the news that Ray's weird hunch was right and he had a bun in the oven. 

And he gets that it's weird, and they're probably processing just like he's processing, but he's been missing the comfort he got from even just a pat on the shoulder. He wriggles back against Mikey, relaxes into him. Lets himself luxuriate while he can.

But Mikey's hands stop moving, which is the exact opposite of what Frank wants. 'Because you're, y'know,' he says, shrugging against Frank's body. 'Pregnant.' He says it like it has some significance that Frank just isn't getting. Yes? Frank knows he's pregnant. It's been a central and inescapably shitty fact of his last two months.

'See?' Frank says, because he knew it. 'I'm an unfuckable land-whale.' He stares at himself in the mirror and sighs, pulls free of Mikey and yanks his shirt back down. 

'No,' says Mikey, spinning him around so they're face to face and Frank isn't looking at his own gross, bloated body any more. 'You're just all, like, delicate and shit.' 

Frank stares at him. This close, the unfairly pretty shape of his mouth, the colour of his eyes, are distracting. 'Dude, no I'm not,' he says. 'I changed all four of the Trans Am's tyres yesterday.' He doesn't admit that it had been a struggle at a couple of crucial moments. It had needed doing, that's all there was to it, and everyone else was dead on their feet, so Frank had done it.

'Yeah, and you know how much of a bitching-out I got for, like, irresponsibly sleeping so you could sneak out and do it?' Mikey asks. 'We gotta take care of you.'

He looks so incredibly earnest about it as he says it that Frank just blinks at him. 'Wait, are you telling me you fuckers have been holding out on me because you think I'm … what, too _breakable_ to have sex with?' he demands. He starts to pull away and Mikey grabs for him. 

'We just -' he starts, and then he rolls his eyes. 'Why, what did you think it was?'

Frank gestures helplessly at himself, fat ankles and greasy hair and everything in between. 

'Oh my god,' says Mikey faintly. 'No. Frank, fuck no.' He pulls Frank right up tight against his body, wraps his arms around Frank's waist. He's so hard it makes Frank's head spin. 'You drive me crazy,' he says into Frank's neck. 'All fuckin' - curves and big eyes and, and you glow, you know that? Thought it was just Hallmark bullshit, people talking about pregnancy making people glow, but god. You do. Makes me wanna _do shit_ to you, lay you down and like, fuck, make love to you, or something.'

Frank whines low in his throat. 'Do it, Mikeyway,' he says, fumbling with Mikey's jacket, trying to slip it off his shoulders. 'C'mon, please? It's been for fucking ever and I fucking need it, man.'

Mikey shrugs the jacket off and catches Frank up in a rush, pushes him against the wall and kisses him with an end-of-his-rope groan, one hand cradling the back of Frank's head and the other on his hip, thumb rubbing softly at the swell of Frank's belly. The kiss is melting Frank's fucking brain, seriously, Mikey's lips are chapped rough from wind and he nips gently at Frank's mouth til they're both panting and rocking into each other, clothes dropping like leaves in a breeze. Frank half trips, pants caught around his knees because he can't get his boots off, and Mikey catches him.

'Let me,' Mikey's saying, pulling at Frank, and Frank goes with it, lets Mikey gently put him on his back on the floor, on the pile of their jackets and shirts, and watches as Mikey unlaces his boots and pulls them off and presses kisses to the sore rub-marks on his ankles where they're puffy and cut-into by his socks and the leather of the boots, keeps kissing, up his calves, pushing his knees apart, dragging his fingers up the soft, pale insides of Frank's thighs. 

He's so fucking careful it would make you spit. No-one's touched Frank like this in years. Maybe not ever.

'Shit,' Frank swears, legs spread wide and Mikey in between them, his mouth on Frank's skin and his dark, hungry eyes fixed on Frank's. 'Mikes, _please -'_

'Yeah,' Mikey murmurs, leaning in.

Frank's pretty sure he's gonna get his cock sucked. No matter what Mikey says, Frank knows he's not exactly hot stuff right now and if that shit about them being worried he's delicate is true, then there's no way Frank's getting what he actually wants, which is a good, hard dicking.

Though hey, a blowjob from Mikey isn't exactly a bad consolation prize, and Frank's so hardup for it, he'll take what he can get.

And Mikey does start with a soft kiss at the head of Frank's dick, bottom lip catching sticky in the precome Frank's already drooling, but then he ducks his head lower and - 

'Jesus, shit,' Frank lurches up and Mikey catches him by the hips and holds him steady and keeps licking at Frank's hole. 'Fucking Christ, Mikey, oh, oh god, fuck yes -' Frank knows he's babbling but - shit. Shit. Mikey Way's mouth was made for sin and he knows how to use it.

Frank's blissed out and moaning like he took too big a handful of something recreational by the time Mikey starts to get his fingers in on the game, and it's been a while so one finger by itself takes time to work in, Frank's body resists but he wants it, they both want it so fucking bad, and Mikey keeps filthy-kissing him down there, licking around his hand.

Spit isn't good lube but if you have enough of it you can make it work and damn but Mikey's doing his best.

The second finger goes a bit easier, muscle memory kicking in. Frank's so fucking ready by the time Mikey pulls back again, for a third finger or maybe some dick, yeah, that'd be good -

Mikey takes him by the hips, though, and rolls him over, and presses soft kisses to the sweaty skin of Frank's back, which is when Frank realises it was hurting, cramping from how hard he was curling up into Mikey's touch.

'Easier on you like this,' Mikey murmurs, voice shot to pieces. He kneels up, and Frank can feel the coarse brush of Mikey's pubic hair against his ass just for a second, the shocking heat of his cock, but then it's fingers he gets again, fingers and Mikey groaning because like this, this angle, Frank can let him in so much easier.

'C'mon,' he says, pushing back against Mikey. 'Fuck me, yeah? Gonna fuck me, Mikeyway? Gonna make me feel good?'

'Anything,' says Mikey breathlessly.

Frank arches his back, pushes his ass up, and it makes his heavy belly hang so low, brush against the fabric and faux leather underneath him. He groans when Mikey pulls his fingers free, whines deep in his throat when he feels the wet touch of the head of Mikey's cock bumping against him, seeking.

'Get it in me,' he pants, and Mikey strokes the small of his back and lines himself up one handed and starts to push.

Frank's already so close, dizzy and feverish with the California heat and so much skin and his fucking hormones, it's fucking embarrassing, but from the noise Mikey makes when he bottoms out, Frank's not alone. 'You feel so fucking good,' Mikey rasps, pulling Frank off his cock by the hips and then pulling him back in, fucking him slow and hard the way he knows Frank likes, and Frank scrabbles at the disgusting concrete floor for purchase he isn't gonna get, but fuck, fuck, _fuck_ -

Mikey curves his arm around Frank's waist and pulls him up on his knees, so they're flush against each other and now Mikey's thrusting up, catching Frank's prostate over and over, hands hot and possessive framing Frank's belly.

Mikey hooks his chin over Frank's shoulder again and looks down. 'So fucking hot, all full,' he growls. 'Can't believe you're carrying a fucking baby, Frank, god, drive me crazy, wanna make you come, wanna keep you in bed and fuck you til you're dripping with it, know the other guys would too, all of us -'

It's a stupid fantasy, but goddamn it's a pretty picture, and Frank moans for it.

'Yeah,' he breathes, groans, dick jerking and untouched and ready to blow any second. 'Yeah, Mikes, want that, want you, please, fuck, I need to come, make me come, Mikey, please?'

Mikey's hand wraps around Frank's cock but he doesn't move it. Frank realises he's had his eyes closed when he feels the rasp of Mikey's stubble against his cheek and looks up to see Gerard and Ray standing in the doorway, and oh, oh fuck.

Fuck.

Frank comes so hard Mikey has to catch him before he falls, lays him gently down again on his knees, arms pillowed under his head, and fucks him hard and perfect til he chokes out a cry and his dick starts pulsing in Frank's ass.

Frank may never move again. His baby's getting born on this bathroom floor.

'Did that look fucking delicate to you assholes?' he manages to say muzzily, and he's rewarded with Gerard's dumbass giggle before he succumbs to the post-orgasm coma.

***

The Killjoys are out to hit and run - they've always been nomadic.

But they've been in this place a week now and nothing terrible has happened, and they're kind of starting to settle in. Gerard hauls an old CB radio setup out of the Trans Am's trunk, where he's been hoarding it since they gutted the wreck of a semi they found being reclaimed by the desert, and sets up his comms inside, rather than spending every sundown fiddling with the radio in the front seat of the car. 

Frank cleans up, or he tries to. Mikey and Gerard stick to him like glue, and won't let him do anything that looks even slightly like 'lifting'. He's pretty sure they don't need to worry about that for like, at least another few months, but in the end he figures out he can twist it to his advantage, and it turns out they are living in the age of miracles after all, because Mikey sweeps the floor and Gerard cleans windows, and they barely bitch about it at all.

Ray _builds a bed_ because of course he fucking does. Out of rebar and scrap wood and half of an old billboard Gerard made him pad with all their blankets before he would let Ray and Mikey tie it to the Trans Am's roof and haul it back, but it's an honest to God bed. He builds it big enough for four people and then gives them a really earnest lecture about how desert nights get cold (which they all know) and it was easier than building four individual beds (was it, though, because there were some serious structural concerns at one point) and it's … kind of cute.

They're, like … kind of nesting.

The first night they all climb in together Frank finds himself pretty forceably spooned into the middle with Ray against his back in full cuddly puppy mode, and maybe he's a suspicious bastard but that doesn't feel like a coincidence.

Not that he's complaining. It's hard to sleep when your body's the wrong shape for lying the comfy way you used to, and everything aches or feels too heavy, and he's been tossing and turning every night since The Bump showed up. But Ray taps out rhythms gently over Frank's heart and hums in his ear like a weird kind of lullaby, and Frank has Gerard curled up against his chest and Mikey's fingers tangled in his own where they're bracketing Gee, and Frank slips off to sleep like that faster than he has in a month.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night it's to the sound of soft kissing, a slow, sloppy sound. Frank starts to get hard before he works out who it is that's making the tiny breathless noises, then he processes, sees how the pale bluish light of the moon eking in through the window turns Gerard's fading red hair to a bleached-out lilac, pale and pretty against the long fingers clenched in it, realises that punched-deep grunt is _Mikey_ all breathless and pinned down. After that he has trouble thinking because all the blood in his system starts to reroute via his dick. Because Jesus ass-fucking Christ.

It's a shock. But it isn't a surprise, all at the same time. It was a weird suspicion for a while, a recurring niggling hunch, and, one time, a drunk jerk-off fantasy he was ashamed of getting off to, but they've been living out of a car together for years and they never - Frank's never actually seen anything, so he's always figured he must have got it wrong.

Except their kisses are open-mouthed, panting, their eyes are closed, the space between their bodies is non-fucking-existent. 

Shit. Frank wants to know how long this has been going on, because that isn't how you kiss someone for the first time. He wants to know how it started, how they've been hiding it - and on a lizard-brain level, he wants to _touch_. But he doesn't want to disturb them. 

He wants to know why this is the first time he's seen it. He wants to know why they think they have to hide, why they think that Frank or Ray would give the tiniest part of a fuck about this. Because God, Frank hopes he hasn't somehow made them think that they have to keep this a secret because of him. Between the four of them they've been sharing everything for years, how could Frank draw a line here when he never felt the need to draw one anywhere else?

He squirms back against Ray, trying to get some friction but not wanting to wake him. It's dark in here but not so dark Frank can't see that Gerard has Mikey on his back and their hips are rocking together, dry-humping like teenagers, hungry and careful and slow. This bed is a fraught, hot little oasis of horny people all trying not to wake each other up, and Frank all of a sudden wants to giggle.

'Mmm?' Ray rumbles in his ear, coming to as Frank grinds on him distractedly. 'Fr'nk, y- huh?'

There's a pause, and Ray's already sleepily half-hard dick gets a heck of a lot harder against Frank's hip. He must have noticed too. Frank takes some comfort in not being the only pervert, and also takes the opportunity to squirm harder against Ray. 

'Fuck,' Ray breathes. 

'Yeah,' Frank agrees. 

Ray's fingers find Frank's hips, pull him back so they can rub together, Ray's dick warm and teasingly good against Frank's ass through their underwear - and that's another good thing about being holed up somewhere, not having to sleep in your jeans.

Ray leans down and kisses Frank's throat. 'They been going long?' he murmurs.

'Dunno,' Frank breathes. 'Fuck.'

'Later,' says Ray, and laughs softly. He skims a hand down Frank's chest and up under his shirt. Frank likes the touching but he's never been that sensitive when it comes to his chest, he'd rather Ray just -

Except then Ray cups one of Frank's pecs, which have been feeling weirdly tender the last few days, thumbs his nipple roughly and Frank just about jerks out of his own skin. He accidentally kicks Gerard in the process.

'Fuck,' Frank gasps. 'Oh my - fucking fuck? What the hell?'

'Motherfucking ouch, asshole,' says Gerard, rolling over. Mikey grumbles in his throat, but he shifts too. Fuck, now they're all looking at Frank and Frank is busy having a goddamn _existential crisis_ here because it feels like -

'You've got tits,' says Ray, in what sounds like shock. He doesn't stop rasping the pad of his thumb over Frank's nipple, and Frank's hips are lurching in time with every pass. 'Frank, you've got -'

Frank nearly bites his tongue in half a second later, because apparently the only thing better than having one tit played with is having both of them played with at the same time. Ray gets both of his hands cupped around them, cradling Frank against him, and rolls onto his back. The Ways crowd in.

Oh. Fuck. 

So it turns out it feels really fucking good having your nipples sucked, and Frank's been missing out all these years. Gerard is licking softly and sloppily at one of them, peeking out from between Ray's fingers where he's gently kneading Frank's flesh, and Mikey's got what feels like most of Frank's other pec in his mouth and is grazing his teeth softly over the peak of the nipple.

Every part of Frank's body feels electric-hot and sensitive, his toes are curling, his hands are shaking as he scrambles for purchase against sweaty shoulders and gets fluttering handfuls of greasy hair, and then someone's hand lands on Frank's cock where it's straining against his underwear, and he comes almost out of shock.

'Jesus,' says Ray faintly.

Frank's a puddle, a melted thing of raw nerve endings, and he pushes his ass back into Ray because he wants to keep feeling like this, reaches down for Gerard and Mikey and realises they're kissing again, hands all over his skin and mouths panting against each other, so close up against him he can feel every hot exhale, every wet, shuddering breath against his hypersensitive chest, and he groans, starting to get hard all over again, hitching his hips against Gerard's thigh. 

Gerard groans, 'God, Frank,' and starts to fumble at Frank's soaked, gross underwear. Mikey switches to kissing Frank, smoothing his hands down Frank's back, and grabbing at Ray's hips to pull him in tight. Frank realises he's naked when Ray's dick is rubbing up against his ass and he's got Gerard frantically frotting against him, his teeth in Frank's neck and Mikey still thumbing Frank's nipples, both of them, and oh, oh fucking god, Ray wraps his arms around Frank, curving protectively around Frank's stupid belly, and his dick is riding the crack of Frank's ass, slick and leaking, and Gerard slides lower and starts licking Mikey's fingers and Frank's tit and it's too good, it's too fucking much. 

Later on, they're a sweaty, gross, hot pile all slumped all over each other. Gerard's soft dick is basically lying on Mikey's thigh where they're cuddled together, and Frank can't stop looking at it. 

Mikey reaches out and touches Frank's forehead, his cheek, til he looks up, but it's Gerard who says, 'So, you don't … you're not gonna freak out about this, are you?' His eyes dart between Frank and Ray. 

'Don't see anything to freak out about,' says Frank, honestly. 

Ray nods agreement against Frank's shoulder. 'Thank you for trusting us,' he says, and it's so fucking _Ray_ , so polite and formal in such an intimate space, Frank has to fight down another inappropriate giggle. 

'I guess we got tired of hiding,' says Gerard, looking back at Mikey with something warm and sure in his eyes. Mikey buries his face in Gerard's neck. 

Frank, on impulse, leans over and kisses Mikey's shoulder, Gerard's mouth, twists to pull Ray in close and gets his throat and a mouthful of hair. 'Good,' he says, trying to fill it with all the certainty he has. He curls his hands around his belly, around … around the baby, and takes a breath. 'Because this is happening. And I can't do it without you guys. So we gotta be a team okay? No more hiding. For any of us.'

It sounds a lot braver than he feels, but if there's anything Frank knows it's that you can't wait for your feelings to catch up with you, you just gotta keep moving. 

***

It takes three rubber-masked corpses on the hard-packed dirt outside the Killjoys' hideout before Frank lets himself acknowledge that maybe he's outgunned here, and maybe this is finally the one he doesn't walk away from.

He crashes to the ground behind one of the defunct pumps and winces, every joint and every vertebra protesting. The battery pack on his gun's not going to last forever. There's at least another four dracs advancing on him, and no low, familiar engine note on the edge of his hearing. No cavalry, no backup. 

The stupid thing is Frank wouldn't be having his fucking famous last stand right now if he hadn't told the others he'd be fine and that they should all go. _Someone_ needed to go - the food situation is dire, and you need two people to dig up a cache if you wanna do it in less than a day, which means you need a third person to spell the other two and act as a lookout. They used to all go, but the others won't fucking let him do anything so he figured it was better to get shit done quietly back here while they weren't hovering, rather than spend that long cramped up in the Trans Am being totally useless.

Of fucking course the ambush came once they were too far away to get back quick, too far away for Frank to get more than the faintest, crackliest hint that Gerard had even heard him when he frantically radioed in the situation. 

A sizzling burst of plasma ignites a rusty pail near the door of the service station, and Frank is close enough to make a break for it, but he can see from the smeary windows they managed to clean last week that there are dracs inside. Fuck. He should never have let them draw him out, but he lost his fucking head. He's not used to fighting solo, not anymore, not for years. He's lost the instinct to keep his back to the wall. 

He's just about decided to try anyway, to try and see how fast he can get to his feet with The Bump in the way, when a shadow cuts across his face. He looks up and points his gun up at the same moment but the drac is too fast for him, and everything goes dark.

***

'Fascinating,' someone is saying, someone Frank doesn't know, far too close for comfort. He goes to punch up and that's how he finds out he's strapped down. 

There's a hand on The Bump. It's cold, sticky-slimy. Not a hand - it feels rounded and hard, moving slowly back and forth and around. His eyes are gummy and dry but he manages to peel them open and look down his own torso. 

'It's just an ultrasound, don't look so horrified,' says the person holding the piece of plastic that's spreading goop all over Frank's body. 'You'll be pleased to know you're developing quite normally.'

Frank's never heard that voice before in his life but he knows that shiny bald head and that fucking attitude.

'Yeah, I'm a normal example of a pregnant dude,' he rasps. His throat's as dry as his eyeballs. 

'Don't be so melodramatic,' says Korse, finally looking at him rather than the grainy black and white screen Frank's trying to ignore. 'By now you must know you're not the first.'

'Sure. Just didn't hear of any of the others ever making it as far as the baby shower.' Frank struggles to sit up again but he really is tied down good. 'Didn't realise this gig came with prenatal checkups either, what do I owe the pleasure?'

'It's Fun Ghoul, correct?'

'What?'

Korse waves a hand irritably. 'Your nickname, nom de guerre, CB handle, whatever it is. Silly, posturing little thing, aren't you? But you're one of the Fabulous Killjoys -' and his mouth twists in a sneer '- I know that much. I just need to find out which one.'

The Killjoys thing was Gerard's idea, of course - a short, dumbass attempt at psychological warfare when they thought dracs had some kind of independent thought of their own, that the dracs were the enemy. Ambushes and noises in the night and graffiti anywhere they could wipe the dust off enough to make paint stick. THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS WERE HERE. Gerard's own technicolor homage to "Now I have a machine-gun. Ho ho ho."

'Course, you can't psych-out a mindless drone, they know that now. But the name stuck, and other things they've picked up or thought of along the way - the radio handles, the bright colours, the kibble caches and the way they always kept running, those do work.

Frank wrenches at his straps one more time. _Did_ work.

'Why, which one of us you got a hard-on for?' he asks. 

'Always so crass,' says Korse, turning off the screen and getting up to put away his equipment. 'None of you in particular. Or all of you, whichever way you prefer to spin it. I just need to know which names are still in play.'

'Well, you got me wrong,' says Frank. 'I'm Party Poison,' because rule number fucking one is you don't play along. 

Korse rolls his eyes. 'You're a terrible liar,' he says, and leaves. 

About ten minutes later, when Frank's back and wrists are really starting to hurt, although probably he should have quit pulling at the straps earlier, a Japanese woman in an amazingly sharp suit and a pair of stilettos she could probably use to kill a man without taking them off first comes in and does something to the examination table that makes it lever upwards so he's sitting. 

He figures she's probably been sent to let him free, take him somewhere maybe, even if it's just to get rid of him. If she gives him the slightest bit of leeway, he's prepared to punch her in the face and run for it, stilettos or no stilettos, except … except she wipes his belly clean of the cold, sticky gel and pulls his shirt down again before she goes for the straps. That makes him pause, because that's not needful, that's not something an enemy would do. It's as if she cares about his dignity or something.

'There are many dangers on the road you travel,' she says quietly as she undoes the ankle straps, and Frank freezes. He knows that voice. 

'You're -,' he says without thinking, manages to freeze the name before it slips out, '- hurting me,' he finishes, lamely.

She knows what he almost said, though. She glares at him, says 'I'm sorry,' coldly. Her hands are still gentle on him, though, and she helps him to his feet and then lets him walk by himself to the door, although she herds him at a pace he can only just make. His legs are sore and his left foot is all pins and needles. He lets her lead him down bright-white corridors, and tries to get his head around it. 

Holy shit. Doctor D's mole inside BL/ind, his best informant. News-a-Go-Go, that's her callsign. Whenever that voice cuts the static, you fucking listen up. They used to stop the car if there was a News broadcast, just to make sure they didn't miss anything, because there were never repeats. 

She's saved the Killjoys' collective asses plenty of times with her intel - hell, anyone calling themselves a zonerunner is probably in her debt somehow, Frank'd bet. They figured she had to be inside somehow, but not this high up. Not right in the inner circle. Fuck. Makes sense, though. Being in a trusted position must put her in the way of a lot of useful shit, but Jesus. Talk about having guts. Frank trips over his feet as she drives him forward. 

She brings him to a room - a cell, actually; no windows, mattress-sized pad on the floor, bucket to piss in, whole nine yards - and locks him in. 

The she slides the little panel in the door open, and her expression has softened just a tiny amount, but it's clear she's not going to help him, even if she wanted to. Frank can respect that. What fucking good is her risking her mission for one life?

Doesn't mean Frank can't ask questions though. He'd be fucking interrogating any other jailer. 

'What the fuck is going on?' Frank demands, and she shakes her head. Her mouth is twisted down in a sad little pout, but there's something fierce in her eyes. 

'You're in the hive now,' she says. 'Listen to the buzz, Fun Ghoul. But know it for what it is when you hear it.'

She slams the little metal slot shut again, and Frank listens to the sharp metallic clicking of her heels fade as she walks away, trying to work out what to do next.

***

'Gee, dude, you're gonna get us killed,' says Mikey softly from the passenger seat, and Gerard grinds his teeth and doesn't lift his boot from the Trans Am's steel floor. It's not as if he hasn't always been a heavy-footed driver. Mikey can shut the fuck up. 'Gerard -'

'Shut the fuck up, Mikey,' says Gerard under his breath, and ignores his brother's hurt expression and Ray's shocked little indrawn breath.

When they finally stop they stop in a cloud of sand and a rattling cough from the engine that part of Gerard knows means he's close to choking the carburetors and he knows that because the little Frank-voice in the back of his head tells him that and -

 _'Fuck,'_ he growls, slamming his hands on the steering wheel and throwing himself out of the car. The old service station is ominously quiet. It also has corpses outside it. That's never a good sign. 

'Frank?' Ray calls, approaching the main door, which is partly off its hinges. He has his gun out. Out of the corner of his eye Gerard can see Mikey circling behind, covering their escape, if they need to make one. Gerard pushes at the door, and slips inside. 

'He's not here -' he calls, and the drac tackles him in the chest and takes him down hard. It's only by the grace of whatever passes for God any more than he doesn't hit the rusty rebar reinforced side of the ridiculous fucking ginormous bed Ray built as he goes to the floor. 

Or maybe Ray's design principles are solid, because it takes Gerard all of about twenty seconds to slam the drac headfirst into the leg of the bed, and then do it again, and a third time for good measure, and then get up and start kicking, and by the time Mikey grabs him by the shoulder there's blood on his boots, on his hands. 

'He's not here,' says Gerard hoarsely, grabbing Mikey right back, clutching him, shaking him, because he's been burning with fury since they picked up the tailend of Frank's last scratchy transmission but now his insides are all like ice. 'Mikey. He's not here, he's not _here _-'__

__'So he's out there,' says Mikey, and his fingers dig into Gerard's ribs through his jacket and ground him like the seeds of bruises. 'So he's _alive_ , and we'll find him. It's fine, Gerard. It's _better_. He's alive. We'll find him.'_ _

__'How do you know?' Gerard buries his face in Mikey's gasoline and grease-smelling shoulder. 'Mikey, how the fuck can you know that?'_ _

__It hangs, the question fucking hangs there in the silence and Gerard is gonna go nuts._ _

__'Because we have to,' Mikey says in a whisper. 'We fucking have to.'_ _

__'There's tracks,' says Ray suddenly, his voice too loud and the metal of the door creaking is like a scream. Gerard winces and Mikey clutches him harder. 'But they won't - guys?'_ _

__Gerard just shakes his head tightly. Ray's heat engulfs him for a second, there's a soft kiss in his hair and he _can't_ , he doesn't deserve comfort right now, not when Frank's in the wind - but it's only a second, a split of a second, and then Ray pulls back and pulls Gerard away from Mikey at the same time. 'We gotta go,' he says. 'Wind's picking up, and those tracks won't last. Gerard? Are we going after him?'_ _

__Gerard tries to find the words, but he can't. In the end Mikey pulls his fingers through his hair and sets his jaw, and answers for him. 'Of course we fucking are.'_ _

__They head north, out towards Route Guano._ _

__***_ _

__'You know where the transmissions come from, tell me,' says Korse evenly. 'It's not complicated.'_ _

__'Fuck you,' says Frank just as evenly back at him. 'Sideways. With a pinecone.'_ _

__He's not sure how long he can go, on tiptoes with his arms strung above his head, but if this is the worst they've got to throw at him, fine. Frank used to be able to play entire gigs with his spine bent up like a pretzel - maybe he's a bit out of practice, but he's a bendy guy, even with The Bump in his way. It's gonna take more than a couple of out of joint shoulders to make him give up D and Pony._ _

__Korse just looks at him. It's hot in here, Frank is shirtless and he's sweating already, but Korse is still in full like, jacket and fucking cravat. 'What are you gonna do?' Frank taunts him. 'If you kill me I can't tell you a damn thing. And if you hurt me too bad, you can't trust anything I say. Right? So what are you gonna do?'_ _

__Rolling his eyes, Korse looks down at his own fingernails critically for a moment, and then says, 'You assume the only leverage I have is _your_ pain.'_ _

__'Don't see anyone else in here with me.'_ _

__'Why would they be in here with you?'_ _

__'Why would I believe anything you say?'_ _

__Korse sighs, and walks over to the wall, where there's a radio setup. Frank twists and eyes him suspiciously. 'I have an exterminator team out, north of here,' he says. 'This is not supposed to be common knowledge, but you, my friend, are tied up, so I don't feel much trepidation about telling you.'_ _

__'So?'_ _

__'So, if you don't believe me when I say there are good reasons for you to tell me where the illegal broadcasts come from, perhaps you will believe the broadcaster.'_ _

__He turns on the radio, twists the dial until it settles into a frequency that's not just static._ _

___'Bad news from the zones, tumbleweeds,'_ says D's voice, and Frank's innards turn to icewater. _'Looks like Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid had a clap with an exterminator that went all Costa Rica, and uh, got themselves ghosted. Dusted, out on Route Guano. So it's time to hit the red-line and up-thrust the volume out there - keep your boots tight, keep your gun close, and die with your mask on if you've got to -'__ _

__Korse clicks the radio off. 'I suspected he might know,' he says evenly. 'My team called it in to me, oh, maybe half an hour ago. He works fast, your friend. He gets his intelligence somewhere. I need to know where. And for that, I need to know where I can find him. So, now that you know I have the ability to find your other friends -'_ _

__Frank's shaking._ _

__He can't - that can't be true. Why would Ray and Mikey - there's nothing _on_ Route Guano, not unless you're coming here, and why would they be heading in from that direction? And where was Gerard -_ _

__Korse is suddenly right in his face. 'Tell me where the radio signals come from, and I might recall my team before they find Party Poison,' he says softly. 'Tell me more than that, and I'll recall the team right now, where you can see me do it, and I'll even let you hear the response.'_ _

__Frank breathes hard through his nose, still shaking, shaking with something boiling hot and cold all at once. Korse cocks an eyebrow at him, right up in his space, stupid macho posturing, and Frank can't fucking look in those soulless eyes one more second, can't take the feel of someone else's breath washing over his skin when he knows Ray and Mikey are out in the dunes somewhere and will never fucking breathe again, so he closes his eyes._ _

__Korse laughs. Too close._ _

__Idiot._ _

__Frank slams his forehead forward as hard as he can, and the crunch of bone is painful but probably more painful for Korse, who goes down like a felled tree. Frank kicks him for good measure, as hard as he can, then stomps his ankle, and kicks again, but that last kick knocks him off balance, and the fall and the wrench to his arms makes him dizzy. By the time he's got his feet under him again and taken the weight off his screaming shoulders, he realises Korse is gone, but someone else is in the room._ _

__'If you touch me I'll fucking kill you,' Frank snarls, wrenching against the handcuffs. He can feel the air shift around him, and he throws himself back when the hair on the nape of his neck starts prickling. Whoever was behind him goes down, swearing, but Frank's more interested in the plaster dust that falls in his eyes, makes him blink wetly for a second. He looks up._ _

__Yanking on the chain that's holding him strung up is actually fucking getting him somewhere. Trust the powers of corporate evil to invest in expensive handcuffs and cheap masonry anchors, jeez. Whoever or whatever he brained a second ago is getting heavily to their feet behind him, so Frank jumps awkwardly and yanks all of his weight down as hard as he can, once, twice, feeling the ceiling give just a little bit more each time. The person behind him makes a grab for him - Frank bulls sideways as hard as he can and the chain parts company with the ceiling. His momentum crashes him into his assailant and then the like, four, five feet of chain drop like lead and he only just rolls out of the way._ _

__It lands on the drac that was gunning for him, and the chunk of metal that was at the top, anchored to the ceiling, slams into their head with a sick, final-sounding crunch._ _

__Whatever's still in Frank that's _Frank_ thinks, good. Fucking good. One less evil thing he has to kill with his bare hands. He rolls away from the twitching corpse and gets to his feet, just in time, because two more of them come through the door, and he needs that door to stay open. The handcuffs on his wrists are enough of a weapon to get one unconscious body jamming the doorway, the auto-lock beeping unhappily when it can't connect, but the chain gets grabbed by the other drac and it uses it to reel Frank in. _ _

__Frank … doesn't know what happens next, or his brain won't let him remember, but when he's back online he's got steel chain wrapped around his fists like knuckle-dusters, and there's blood, drying tacky on the tattoos that say _hopeless_ and _romantic_._ _

__Something steps over the mess of meat he's made and out the door, into Better Living Industries, but it isn't Frank Iero. Not really. It's half-naked and heavy with a baby and all it can think of is that it's going to make BL\ind _pay_ , blood for blood, an eye for an eye, everything for everything. _ _

__There's movement ahead. Fun Ghoul grins._ _

__It doesn't take him long to get a gun. It takes him even less time to get two guns. And he stoops to pull the white coat off the drac he took the second one from, too. It's too long, too wide in the shoulders and too tight around the middle, really, but plus his longish hair, it's enough of a disguise._ _

__Because he could run around gunning down minions til he got hit himself, but that … that wouldn't do near enough fucking damage. No. He needs to sneak, and he needs to plan, and he needs to get right into the rotten, cancerous heart of this place and blow it the fuck up, or burn it to the ground, hell, sow the remains with salt and depleted uranium and release fucking mutant death-pigs or whatever else would mean that everything BL\ind ever worked for had died._ _

__He's gonna kill it all, every person, every brick, every pane of glass, every bit of data. And even that won't be enough, because it won't …_ _

__Because there are bodies out there in the dunes somewhere that Frank won't even get to say goodbye to. Because he doesn't even know how many - no-one said anything about Gerard. Party Poison wasn't on the death toll, but Korse never recalled his exterminators._ _

__Another drac crosses his path looking the wrong way, and Frank doesn't even bother with the gun, it's quieter to just use the chain to bring him to his knees, that sick ending-gurgle less likely to draw attention than a blast. He stands over the body, panting, forcing himself to look, because if he's going to do this he's not going to blame it on the fucking red mist, like a coward._ _

__Plus how is he gonna handle it when he goes looking for - if he can't handle looking at this? And he has to go looking, if he lives that long. He can't let them stay out there in the zones, unburied, unmourned. He has to know how it happened. And he has to find Gerard, one way or the other._ _

__If Gerard is still alive, he thinks he's alone, and that hurts Frank even worse than the cold-boiled feeling of being alone himself. Gerard … Gerard isn't good on his own. Gerard without Mikey by his side is fucking unstable, they saw that on tour, and Frank hasn't _ever_ seen Gerard without Ray stage left. Of all of them, you would never have picked Gerard for the last man standing, for good fucking reasons. _ _

__There's a flutter-thud inside Frank, though, as he's looking down at the cooling body at his feet. A kick. And another, harder. 'Ow, hey,' he murmurs down at his belly. 'Cut it out, kid.'_ _

__It doesn't stop though. 'You better not turn out to be a fucking drummer, that would be just my goddamn luck,' he says. He does tear his eyes away from the corpse, though, and realises he's got to make a choice here. Like, a simple one - left or right - but it's a choice and he doesn't have any grounds to make either decision. There's no daylight down here, he has no idea where he's going or what direction …_ _

__Someone on the right hand side of him literally yells 'there he is!' though and that's enough reason for Frank to rabbit left, still being kicked hard from the insides and trying to get off enough gunfire to keep his pursuit behind him. He rounds a corner and smashes into a door on accident, too much momentum as he spins on his heel, and he's expecting to ricochet off it but instead he crashes through._ _

__Frantically he kicks it shut behind him and lies there in the dark trying to keep his panting breath and pounding heart under control, because since when has his luck ever been this fucking good - but the pursuit hightails it past._ _

__Very very slowly, Frank gets his feet under him and moves, trying to make as little noise as possible just in case someone's like, lurking. One of his boots scrapes against something metal and he winces and freezes, but … no, nothing. It takes him so long to get properly to his feet - awkward around The Bump and trying so hard to be quiet and not put his weight on things that might shift and make noise - that by the time he's standing his eyes have adjusted to the gloom._ _

__He's in a store cupboard, like, a walk-in closet full of brooms and mops and shit. The janitor's storeroom, probably. Well, even the fucking Powers of Evil gotta eat and drink and shit, and Frank's willing to bet they don't clean their own floors._ _

__The Bump does another Lars Ulrich impression inside him and Frank starts to feel nauseous. He leans against the bare metal upright of the nearest shelving unit and does the kind of special breathing that always got him through when the nausea was caused by poor life choices involving beer and not … like, a baby._ _

__He starts to laugh, and his throat feels ripped-raw from where he's been wheezing from running and fighting, because he never ever ranked 'unprotected sex' as the poor life choice that was gonna get him. He tries to choke the giggles down, muffles them in the crook of his elbow, but they won't be stopped, they morph, and eventually he's sobbing into the sleeve of the drac jacket._ _

__He cries hard, wrenching deep from his gut, the kind of tears he hasn't cried in a long time, not since the bombs fell. They lost so fucking much that day but they didn't lose everything. At least when the bombs fell he wasn't alone afterwards. But now he's got nothing._ _

__He scrapes the rough cuffs of the jacket over his eyes when he finally gets his breathing - gets himself - under control. What the fuck is he going to do now? So much for anarchy and mayhem and revenge, so much for being Fun Ghoul - no no, Frank Iero is _bravely_ hiding in a fucking supply closet - _ _

__He takes a deep lungful of air, bites his lip hard, and looks up, blinking in the barely-there light._ _

__Directly in front of him is a five gallon industrial bottle of cleaner. And all of a sudden he knows what he's going to do. He searches around for a bag, a sack, whatever, and finds a roll of garbage bags, but what, is he gonna carry gallons of chemicals around on his back like the most disappointing, dangerous Santa impersonator ever?_ _

__Then he realises that the big, dark shape in the far back corner of the room is a janitor's cart, complete with trashbag holder and plenty of space for actual cleaning products. And a set of overalls hung over the handle._ _

__When he leaves the store cupboard, it's with as much 'bright whitening effect!' peroxide-containing cleaning spray as he could stash in the cart, and his head down, and literally a gun in each pocket, but no-one bothers him. He cautiously wanders along hallways, poking his head into rooms trying to get his bearings - he even empties a few trashcans and, once, mops a floor, because a dude with an ID card on a little plastic dangly thing on his chest literally spilled a coffee in front of him and gave him a 'well?' look._ _

__Frank hasn't even smelled coffee in five fucking years, but he mops it off the floor and keeps moving. He needs to find a garage. The exterminators have cars, they must have a garage._ _

__It takes him two floors and a tense three minutes in an elevator with another dude with an ID card and a cup that it takes all of Frank's self-control not to shiv him for, but he does find a garage, and it's the fucking jackpot. It's actually more like an industrial workshop, which is just _fine_ for his purposes. It's not like he's here for the cars. Or. Not just the cars._ _

__There are three people working in it, in white drac coats with their sleeves rolled up and god knows what streaked across the cloth, grease and dirt and paint Frank guesses. Their drac masks are pushed up over their foreheads, keeping their hair out of their eyes as they work on machinery. They have guns on them, though, and in some ways they're brighter than the fucking corporate drones, because they all reach for them but also they all pause. Because Frank's entry point to the room has put him in front of a wall full of shelves of fucking flammables._ _

__They're all surrounded by like, bandsaws or cars or piles of aluminium offcuts, though, so there's nothing to stop Frank from pulling the trigger. Another three corpses shouldn't be more than a drop in the fucking bucket to him by this point, but the bit inside of him that still cares, locked up behind the steel curtain around his heart, is shaken by the fact that he can see their faces. He shoves it down. He's got a job to do._ _

__Frank wasn't exactly AP chem in high school, but since the world turned to shit he's picked up a few things his teachers back in the day were probably rightfully afraid of him ever learning. Right now, he picks up a wrench and goes for the closest car. It's awkward reaching into the guts of engines with The Bump in the way, he nearly gets brained a few times by hoods coming free of props and dropping on him, and lead-acid batteries are fucking heavy, but eventually he manages to stack every single one from every single car in the place in a pile by a workbench, and pushes his cart over to it._ _

__It only occurs to him after he's done it that he could have just taken a car and driven away. He could leave everything here behind and go searching - but then he thinks about the idea of letting _this_ go on when there are footsteps he'll never hear again and touches he'll never feel again, and the answer's no. Not on your fucking life. _ _

__No. Frank has a plan and he's gonna stick to it. They should have done this years ago._ _

__There's one more thing he needs, but hey, he figures any organisation as clearly anti-graffiti and pro-things being neat and tidy and sterile will have - yeah, there we go. He lurches over to the aforementioned wall of flammables and pulls down a can of paint-stripper._ _

__This is probably a really fucking stupid thing to do while pregnant, without gloves, and while your hands are shaking, but he takes his time, and by the time he runs out of watery acid, which is a bitch to siphon out of the tiny holes in the plastic bodies of the batteries, he's got a few dozen full, cloudy mason jars lined up in front of him, and he blinks._ _

__Shit. That's a lot. He's never made that much all at once before. He picks up the first two jars carefully and goes to put them in the cart and then reconsiders. 'Yeah, nah, fuck that,' he says to himself, huffing a laugh under his breath, and ferrets out some cleaning rags. He wraps every jar as tightly in as much packing material as he can find, and wedges them into the shelves of the cart where the chemical bottles were before._ _

__Then he very, very carefully pushes the cart back out and finds the elevator. Every time he crosses a join in the carpet, or the metal runner for a door, and the cart goes _kluh-klunk_ over it, he winces, which probably looks really fucking suspicious, but he knows exactly what he's carrying here and - well, actually no, he doesn't know exactly what he's carrying, he just knows what happens when you shake it too hard. Or drop it. _ _

__Or throw it._ _

__He has to find Korse. That fucker has it coming. And that's just the start of Frank's plans for his afternoon's adventures in science experiments. Part of him, a big part, is really fucking tempted to find whatever their centre of command is, or maybe their server room, wherever they keep all the data, and just like, ramraid it with his cart. Take it all out in one go. He knows he wouldn't walk away from it, but that's almost the point._ _

__But that's not very smart. So when the elevator comes, Frank hits the button for the second, not the top, floor. He hasn't got enough explosives to bring the place to the ground. That's a fact. At best he's got enough to take out a few strategic spots._ _

__But y'know what he does have? A fucking lighter, and an excuse to mess with every trashcan in the building._ _

___Ding. Ding. Ding._ The sad little chime rings out every time they pass a floor. No-one else gets on, but Frank starts to get twitchy anyway. The old schtick about things being too quiet starts to eat at him. The worst part about doing this smart is that he has to do it slow. He has to do it careful. He has to do it right or there's no point doing it at all, and that fucking chafes him when he wants to just do this full yippie-ki-yay, and if it takes him out in the process on accident, well. _ _

__But D said _Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid_ \- he didn't say Party Poison, and Frank's so fucking tired and heartsore and heavy, he yearns to just get this shit done and for it to be over, but if there's the tiniest chance any of them is still out there, Frank doesn't have it in him to leave them to go on alone. And he doesn't know for _sure_ that Gerard is alive, but he doesn't know for sure that Gerard is dead, either. _ _

__Two floors to go. _Ding_. One floor to go. _Ding_. The doors open, and Frank pushes the cart into the second floor. It's quiet, mostly cubicles - all fawn and grey and uniform as far as the eye can see. Frank parks the cart next to a fake rubber plant, slides a jar into his pocket, and heads for the closest trashcan, which he fusses with. He's pretending to change the bag inside, but actually, he quietly lights the screwed up papers and lunchwrappers inside on fire, piles up as much of the fuel as possible to give it plenty to work through before the smoke becomes apparent, and then moves the can a strategic foot to the left, nearer to a bulletin board that's got papers pinned low to the ground. On his way out he casually leaves the jar he pocketed on the floor near a doorjamb, exactly where someone in a hurry might come along and kick it. _ _

__He sets at least one fire on every floor. Some of them he gets lucky - the higher he goes the more separate offices there are, the more assholes with overflowing trashcans to burn he crosses paths with. He leaves a jar anywhere he thinks might be a good candidate for a trip hazard. He pours bleach carefully into a water cooler on the fifth floor, adds caustic soda to a canister of instant coffee on the eighth, and thinks, as he's shaking the little granules in and mixing them around so that the powdered coffee dust coats them and makes them look just like Nescafe, _wow, that's a really horrible thing to do,_ but he doesn't … feel it. He feels numb, like he's been lying in a bath of ice. He should care. He should be wrestling with this, he should be horrified by what he's capable of, but he isn't._ _

__Because these fuckers have chilled water. They have coffee. Fuck it, they have trashcans and bathrooms with toilets that flush, and out in the zones Frank and Ray and Gerard and Mikey didn't even have a bucket to shit in most of the time, they had _nothing_ , and people who had everything still sent out killers after them. _ _

__So Frank keeps his eyes on the carpet and quietly and methodically poisons edibles and lays little fires and leaves shock-detonatable explosives in places people will kick them if they're not looking, and he hopes they take their fucking feet off, just like he hopes to God someone drinks that fucking coffee. By the time he hits the tenth floor, the penultimate floor, he's surprised he hasn't heard a fire alarm. He's also out of jars, except for the last one, which is the biggest one._ _

__And y'know what, he could go into the centre stairwell and drop it, fuck up all the ground floor exits, pull the fire alarm so the elevators won't work, and burn the place to the ground with everyone inside, like rats in a trap. He could do it now, except he has a target he needs to fucking look in the eyes the same way he viscerally _has_ to find those bodies. Some things you need to do yourself. There are two kinds of graves you need to dig with your own hands._ _

__Frank checks his pockets for his guns and then, very carefully, takes the last, biggest mason jar out of the cart and puts it down the front of his coverall, wadded up in semi-clean rags and a mophead._ _

__'Hang on to that for me, kid,' he murmurs down at The Bump, which the jar is sitting on top of. He makes a face down his top, and adds, 'Sorry.'_ _

__Anyone who tackles Frank is gonna fucking regret it. So will Frank, but he needs that jar and he's going to need to be able to move fast when the time comes to use it. He grabs the mop from the cart though, too, as camouflage, and heads back to the elevator. Before he can reach it, though - it's in his sights, but it's over the other side of the floor, visible only in snatches as he weaves through weird little cubicle corridors and plate-glass office window-walls - the bell dings and the doors open._ _

__And Frank's first instinct is to fucking dive sideways and hit the deck when he sees Korse come out flanked by dracs but thank god he _doesn't_ because he's basically wearing a fucking bomb. Instead he kind of lurches through a cubicle 'doorway' and gets under a desk. Too fast and not subtle enough, though, because he hears Korse say, 'there, go, go around -'_ _

__He pulls the guns out of his pockets, and braces himself. Time doesn't slow down, because time doesn't, but when you know exactly what you want to do sometimes it's like you have all the breathing space you need for every movement._ _

__That's when Frank realises he can hear an alarm going off, smell smoke. Someone runs past the gap in the felt cubicle wall and he pulls the triggers on both guns without even thinking about it. The body falls, and the drac running immediately behind his first target trips, and Frank shoots them too. It's like a surreal mashup of The Office and the Lord of the Rings - Frank can see a fucking _water-cooler_ from his hidey hole while he's plugging the hole in his defences literally with the bodies of his enemies. _ _

__It's the kind of mental image that would have got a snort out of Mikey, popcorn thrown at his head by Ray, started a monologue from Gerard, and Frank's heart kicks in his chest, hard and bitter and distracting._ _

__He takes down another two dracs, and they really are starting to pile up now. Finally the adrenaline is starting to burst through the numb ice-dam of his feelings, and he can't tell if he's scared or mad or nauseous, only that The Bump is kicking him again and the guns are getting hot from repeated firing but he doesn't dare stop. Crossfire is as much of a defence as he has right now._ _

__He wishes he had any fucking hope of the cavalry coming for him, but he knows he doesn't._ _

__Which is when the wall behind him literally disappears, ripped from its useless floor-anchors and tossed away, and someone reaches in and grabs Frank by the scruff of his neck from behind. He drops his guns and clutches himself round the chest and middle reflexively to stop the jar from tumbling out of his coverall, and prays, _prays_ they don't shove him or throw him down. _ _

__They're hauling him to his feet, though. When he's finally standing, he blows his bangs out of his face and realises they're soaked through. He blinks up at the ceiling. Water is falling down in the form of a mist that greys out everything more than about a foot away from Frank's nose._ _

__'Sprinklers,' says Korse flatly, water trickling down his face. He doesn't blink, even when a drop skirts the crinkle of his left eye. His nose is a distorted, swollen mess - Frank must have broken it. 'You are a lot of trouble for an unwashed delinquent. But fortunately for you, trouble is about the worst of it.'_ _

__Frank spits to try and clear his mouth of gunky saliva and the nasty metallic taste of sprinkler water, and says, 'everyone still got all their limbs?'_ _

__Korse meets his eyes steadily and says, 'everyone important,' and Frank bites his lip viciously and curls his fingers in his palms til his nails start to cut at him, and refuses to let himself fucking just tackle this poisonous motherfucker to the ground and let the resulting fireball eat them both._ _

__Someone looms into view behind Korse, who doesn't even twitch. No-one else has come near them - either Frank took out more of the minions than he thought, or they've got other jobs to do while the boss-man deals with Frank. But Frank blinks, and the shape resolves itself into News-a-Go-Go, looking put-together and pissy as fuck. 'All fires are out,' she says to Korse. 'And the casualties have been dealt with.'_ _

__There's something in the way she says 'dealt with' that suggests to Frank that her solution was pretty final. Korse waves it away, though, like it's not important. News doesn't stop looking at Frank. Frank starts to get a sneaking suspicion that he doesn't form part of News's long game, that his Hail Mary play is in the way of whatever actual plan she and D have had going for years, and that maybe she'll deal with him, too._ _

__If he still trusted her long game to cover the people - the person, the one last person - he wanted to save, he'd let her. But he doesn't. Under the coveralls, The Bump starts to kick again. Frank hugs himself and feels the hardness of the glass jar against his body even through all the padding, and starts to work on his buttons. Decision reached._ _

__Maybe this takes him out. Maybe it takes News out. But it takes Korse out too, and what the fuck does Frank have to lose, anymore? If Gerard's out there in the zones he's a fuckload safer without Korse to come after him, with the building burned down, with the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W head cut off the BL\ind snake._ _

__'Are we mobile?' Korse asks. He doesn't look away from Frank._ _

__But News doesn't either. She looks Frank dead in the eyes, like she can see into his soul and also into the fact that his hand is slipping under the wrappings and gripping the smooth glass of the mason jar, the Hail Mary play, and says, 'Don't worry. Reinforcements are coming.'_ _

__Then she shoots Korse in the head._ _

__'What the _fuck -_ ' Frank almost drops the jar in shock, but News lunges over Korse's body and grabs him before his fingers uncurl. _ _

__'They're coming,' she says. 'Don't be stupid, Fun Ghoul, listen to me -'_ _

__'You fucking -'_ _

___Ding_ , goes the elevator. Frank lifts his eyes over News's shoulder as the doors open, bracing himself for another onslaught, more dracs, the reinforcements she was warning him about -_ _

__Ray, Mikey and Gerard burst out of the elevator doors in fucking puke-bright grungy technicolor, and Frank's knees stop working. So do his lungs, and his heart, and his fucking brain, just, everything, he flatlines in shock. Because. They're. They're right there. Gerard's looking grim and Mikey's looking grimmer and Ray's tucking his hair behind his ear and they're all moving and breathing and -_ _

__News catches the jar before it hits the floor, but she can't catch Frank as well. So she doesn't._ _

__***_ _

__'Fun Ghoul? Hey, Fun Ghoul -'_ _

__It's his CB handle, not his name, which instantly puts Frank on alert, but it's in Gerard's voice._ _

__Frank blinks groggily. He's horizontal on something not-hard. It's such an unfamiliar sensation that it takes him a while. 'Is this a bed?' he croaks, and the face in front of him resolves into a worried pair of eyes in a gaunt face, with dusty, regrowth-riddled scarlet hair on top._ _

__'Oh thank god,' Gerard says, and buries his face in Frank's neck. This puts a lot of weight on the rest of Frank, and Frank doesn't care. He clutches Gerard to him and looks over his shoulder at Ray and Mikey._ _

__'Form an orderly queue, motherfuckers,' he rasps at them. 'Or just, fuck, get over here.'_ _

__It's not the most painful group hug Frank's ever had with these boys (that honour goes to the time he broke a rib stage-diving) but even if it was, it's definitely the one he wanted to let go of least._ _

__Behind them or, above, or … outside the hug, whatever, there's a cough. 'So. We should talk,' says D. Everyone kinda gets off Frank, although none of them get off the bed - Ray curls up against the headboard and tugs Frank up til he's sitting half in Ray's lap, Gerard tucks up against him with one hand brushing The Bump. Mikey sprawls across everyone's feet, curling his fingers around Frank's ankle like he's trying to ground himself._ _

__D talks like it's a military debrief. Not for the first time, Frank wonders what the fuck this guy used to do before the bombs fell. It turns out there was a plan, which Frank was supposed to play an unwitting role in, except -_ _

__'Dude, you weren't supposed to double down,' Pony says. She still looms over the rest of them even standing at the back of the room with her arms crossed over her chest. 'You were supposed to escape, not go fucking _Die Hard 4.0_ on the place.'_ _

__'Screw you,' Frank suggests. 'I had -' he starts coughing, hacking up nasty, chemical-and-ash tasting gunk._ _

__'Also that shit you were making needs a well-ventilated space, you moron.'_ _

__Frank gives Pony the finger. Pony blows him a sardonic kiss. Ray pats Frank's back gently, and Frank is so fucking grateful to see them all again, even D and Pony, he thinks his heart might burst. 'I had reasons,' he says when he can catch his breath again._ _

__'You could have died,' Gerard murmurs into Frank's ear. 'You and the baby.'_ _

__'I thought - I mean. I heard D say you guys were -' Frank can't even say it. 'I didn't know where you were, if you …' Gerard looks at him from under his eyelashes. 'And I had an opening. What else was I supposed to do?'_ _

__'If we could leave the heartfelt emotional speeches until after the logistics are through?' says News from the chair she's perching in. 'Only I have a large evil corporation to dismantle.'_ _

__'Why do you need us for the logistics of that?' Mikey asks, tracing little patterns on the skin of Frank's calf. 'Why are we even still here?'_ _

__'Large corporations require donkey-work to take to pieces,' says News. 'And all I have to work with are a few hundred brainwashed, heavily-medicated former evil minions, and … you.' She says it with a weird combination of inflections that at first Frank thinks it translates to _ugh, useless, unwashed, and disgusting_ but then, looking at the way her mouth twitches, he thinks maybe it's some kind of fondness. 'Well,' she adds. 'They take donkey work to take to pieces unless you want to literally burn them to the ground.'_ _

__'We could do that,' Gerard offers. 'Wholesale Mayhem R Us.' He does jazz hands, because even living in a postapocalyptic dystopia hasn't stopped him being a tragic nerd._ _

__'Wouldn't that be 'is us'?' Mikey asks._ _

__Something starts to gnaw in Frank's gut. Shit, shit, shit, he _forgot_ -_ _

__'But then it stops being, like, a reference,' says Ray. His hand has slipped onto Frank's belly as well. His fingertips are touching Gerard's somewhere around Frank's bellybutton, and Frank isn't even sure they've noticed._ _

__News stares at them all flatly. Frank starts to giggle slightly hysterically, something disjunct between his brain and his body._ _

__D breaks the stalemate by asking, 'how do you feel about spreadsheets?'_ _

__Pony puts her hands over her face._ _

__As soon as he can, though, with _Wholesale Mayhem R Us_ singing sickly in his ears, and when the rest of the boys are arguing about something dumb, Frank lumbers to his feet, catches News before she can leave the room. 'You gotta change all the water,' he says urgently, as under his breath as he can. 'All those fucking coolers, you gotta throw them out, okay? And the office supplies. The tea and coffee, get rid of it. And -'_ _

__'I already had the administrative floors swept for your explosives,' she says calmly. 'They'll be taken care of. The food and drink is already gone - it was all contaminated with low levels of their mind-controlling drugs, anyway.'_ _

__'Are you sure -'_ _

__'Yes,' says News, pulling Frank's hand off her forearm, but squeezing his fingers gently before she lets it go. 'I'm sure, Fun Ghoul.'_ _

__It's on the tip of his tongue to ask her about … about casualties. Deaths. But she leaves before he can force his mouth to open and let the words out. Gerard gives him an odd look when he comes back to the group, to sit between Gerard and Ray now that they've finally stopped gesticulating about whatever was so important, but he doesn't say anything either._ _

__It's probably for the best. Frank doesn't have the balls to explain._ _

__***_ _

__Frank is neutral on spreadsheets, although News takes him off actual data entry duty before two hours have passed because of a combination of the way he constantly jiggles his leg under his desk and his complete inability to spell. He doesn't tell her that both of these things are things he can actually control, he just chooses not to most of the time, and escapes. She keeps her hooks in Mikey, though, because despite the fact that he is actually the laziest person Frank has ever known, he's weirdly good at this kind of shit. Gerard also sticks around, because he's gone full-blown martyr and the fact that he hates stultifying officework makes it clearly the biggest sacrifice he could make in the name of The Revolution._ _

__D collars Frank in the corridors before he can actually abscond, though. 'You need to lemme look at you, kid,' he says gruffly. 'Good job on getting out, but I was coming to getcha anyway.'_ _

__'Why?' Frank says, crossing his arms less 'over his chest' and more 'on top of The Bump'. The last thing he wants is like, medical shit happening to him. 'I just got free of being poked and prodded at, Korse was all over me with a frigging ultrasound. Gimme a day, jeez.'_ _

__D just looks at him levelly. 'Yeah, about that ultrasound,' he says, and then sort of trails off._ _

__Frank narrows his eyes. 'What?'_ _

__'Uh. You better come look.' Frank doesn't move, and D holds his hands up palm out, peace-making. 'I swear on my mother's grave I won't touch you,' he says. 'But really, Fun Ghoul, you need to see this.'_ _

__Frank trails him through the maze of corridors and down two floors in the elevator til they fetch back up at the room Korse had him tied down in for the whole semi-invasive and wholly-unwanted medical procedures thing. It takes D a while to boot up the computer and get everything started and ready, and then the software for whatever he wants to show Frank takes an age to start. Frank starts to pace, poking at the files D's clearly been looking through, set out in piles on various desks, and avoiding looking at anything even vaguely medical-equipment-like._ _

__'I was just going back through their recent files,' says D, still looking at the screen. 'And News said Korse had had you in here for a check-up, so I figured -'_ _

__'Yeah, no, thanks, man. It's not like he told me anything,' Frank says, straightening a stack of folders. The door's still open. He could totally just like, thank D for his time and leave. Finally, just before Frank's actually given in to the urge to crumple up some paper into a ball to throw, D clicks something and an ultrasound scan image loads._ _

__At first it's all a big jumble of pixellated grey blobs that Frank can't make out, but D reaches out and traces first one, then another curve with a finger and looks at Frank helplessly. 'Congratulations?' he says awkwardly._ _

__Frank squints. 'You're shitting me.'_ _

__'No wonder you popped so fast,' says D. 'I mean, they're little, but they both look okay, and you seem to be carrying comfortably enough.'_ _

__Frank sits down hard and almost overbalances because he catches the seat of the wheelie office chair at an awkward angle and it scoots backwards a bit - D catches it by the arm and holds it steady til Frank's settled. 'I can't do this,' he says._ _

__'Of course you fucking can,' says D. 'You were gunning to blow up BL\ind by yourself, kid, you trying to tell me you don't have the balls to look after a couple of babies?'_ _

__Frank puts his head in his hands and resists the urge to start giggling, because he knows if he starts he might not be able to stop. 'Fuck, D. What the fuck am I going to do?'_ _

__D wheels over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. 'First you're going to have a stiff fucking whiskey,' he says. 'Then you're going to tell your boys.'_ _

__'I thought you weren't supposed to drink while pregnant,' says Frank, looking up. He shelves the question of where the hell he's supposed to get this medicinal whiskey._ _

__D pulls a flask out of his pocket with a grin. 'Try telling that to the French,' he says. 'One won't hurt you, kid. You look like you're going to faint.'_ _

__'I still might,' Frank points out, taking the flask when it's offered. 'Fucking Christ, D. Seriously.' There's a million other things to say, and Frank can't verbalise any of them. He's fucking scared, but he's been fucking scared all along. And at the same time there's a fierce excitement in him as well, and he realises that in a weird way that's been there all along, too. He knocks back a slug of - 'that's not fucking whiskey,' he says, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand and trying not to cough._ _

__'It is if I say it is. I made it,' says D, taking it back and swigging like it's water. 'What, you thought maybe we still had a stash of Laphroaig kicking around?'_ _

__'Fuck you,' says Frank, rolling his eyes. 'Call yourself a doctor.'_ _

__'Best doctor you're gonna get, kiddo. Now, are you gonna let me actually take a fucking look at you now I've got some proper equipment, or are you done?'_ _

__Frank looks around the grey and white and stainless steel room, and shivers. He's spent enough time in hospitals. Years and lives ago, but still, enough time. 'I'm done,' he says._ _

__D frowns in a worried way. 'Even a normal pregnancy isn't a cakewalk,' he says. 'I know it's freaky-deaky, but it won't just … magically work if you don't pay any attention to it,' he says. 'Your odds haven't been great but you got this far, and … fuck it, Fun Ghoul, I'd really like to see you make it all the way through.'_ _

__'I'll come back,' Frank forces himself to say. 'Seriously, I mean it. Just like, let me get my head straight, and then I'll come back and you can … look at whatever it is you want to. Just not yet. Gimme a day.'_ _

__'A day,' says D, fixing him with a basilisk eye. 'Then you're gonna let me give you and your fucking spawn a once-over.'_ _

__'I promise,' says Frank, backing towards the door before D can, like, scoot forward and grab him or something, in case this is a trap. But he makes it out the door and … keeps going. He makes it all the way down to the ground floor before he realises what he's doing, that he's fucking running, except he can't run away from his own goddamn pregnancy, that makes no sense._ _

__He knows he should go find the others. Do like D said, and tell them. But he kind of needs to process this._ _

__So he goes outside into the scorching, gasp-dry desert and finds where the guys ditched the Trans Am on their way in here, and drives her around the BL\ind building til he finds the garage door into the workshop._ _

__He then spends nearly four hours desperately shovelling sand out of her engine bay and undercarriage, cursing Gerard Way, his lead feet and his inability to corner without throwing the wheel round so hard it sends sand spraying everywhere. When Ray finds him, he's trying to get purchase with one knee on the front bumper so he can reach further back into the engine, and failing, and mostly actually just sort of falling._ _

__Ray catches him around the middle and pulls him back to stand on the concrete garage floor. 'We've been looking for you everywhere,' he says. 'Dude. What are you doing? There's _pizza_.'_ _

__'I'm having twins,' says Frank helplessly, dropping the screwdriver he was using to scrape sand out from between hoses and in the weird crevices around the engineblock._ _

__Ray blinks at him for a long second and then sweeps him up into a hug so fierce Frank's eyes pop a little._ _

__'Then you definitely need pizza,' he says into Frank's hair, and Frank knows 'pizza' means _we love you_ and _we're gonna look after you_ just as much as it means anything about food._ _

__***_ _

__The pizza is very clearly something that's been in frozen storage since the year whatever, but fuck, it's amazing even so._ _

__'Cheese,' says Gerard reverently, holding a floppy, microwaved slice in one hand as gently as if it were a holy relic. Everyone else nods, faces too full of said cheese to actually talk back. Frank grimaces, but he can't really complain. Gerard lovingly removed every single molecule of cheese from Frank's pizza in the same way people used to, like, peel grapes or whatever. Like, it was a gesture, a really fucking sweet one, particularly since he carefully made sure all the actual vegetables stayed behind, as opposed to leaving Frank with a hunk of vaguely warm bread covered in tomato sauce._ _

__Once the feeding frenzy has slowed down a bit, D gives Frank a meaningful look and pulls a big theatrical yawn. Frank's stomach clenches, even though there's been no dairy near it. He almost wishes he did have the excuse of it being the dietary requirements._ _

__'I'm gonna hit the hay,' D says. 'Anyone seen News or Pony?'_ _

__'News said she was too busy to eat so Pony took her some pizza,' says Mikey, trying to nibble cheese and tomato sauce off where it's kind of congealed on his thumbnail. 'Why?'_ _

__'Eh, no reason,' says D. 'You kids don't stay up too late, now.'_ _

__He shoots Frank another look at he slides out the door. Ray's also kind of giving Frank a look, although not as pointed. He knows Frank well enough to know he doesn't hide shit, he just sometimes takes a while to find the right way to say it. Ray'll be patient with him. But Frank knows he can't leave this any longer than tonight and not feel dishonest._ _

__Frank waits for a quiet moment, when everyone's got a piece of pizza in hand and no-one's talking. He coughs and wipes his hands on his jeans, and doesn't look up when he says, 'so, I'm kind of having twins,' all in a rush._ _

__There's a soft noise as Gerard drops his slice of pizza. Frank looks up in time to see it land sauce-side-down on his dirty-white jeans, but Gerard doesn't even seem to notice. He stares, and Mikey stares too, and Ray gives Frank an encouraging thumbs up from behind them. So Frank clears his throat and keeps pushing on. 'So. If you guys still want -'_ _

__'Shut up,' says Mikey softly, and twines his long fingers around Frank's wrist, pulling him close. 'Of course we still want to.' He meets Frank's eyes and says, 'Of course we still want _you_ ,' like he knows that's what Frank's having trouble with. Fucking psychic Mikeyway._ _

__Gerard's already on his hands and knees practically crawling through the minefield of pizza debris until he can get his hands on Frank as well, and he's a lot less delicate about it than Mikey. 'You're not fucking getting rid of us now,' he says fiercely into Frank's hair. 'Shit, Frankie.'_ _

__Ray rolls his eyes at them all fondly and gets up to pick the pizza off the floor. Frank goes down a willing sacrifice under a pile of bony Way bodies, which is when News and Pony come through the door. Frank can feel their judging faces even though he can't see them._ _

__'I had some rooms made up for you,' says News, after they disentangle themselves and pretend they're adults who have dignity and weren't cuddling on a pizza-strewn floor, and they thank her like they're schoolboys. Mikey has cheese in his hair, for God's sake. It's so fucking ten years ago, it's so fucking _familiar_ , Frank expects Brian to show up clacking keycards together. _ _

__Except the rooms, when they find them, are just that - rooms, plural. One each. Bare and impersonal and very clearly just another kind of cubicle for when BL\ind employees had to recharge their feeble organic batteries. Frank lies down on a flat surface that he supposes must technically be a bed, and can't sleep. It's too fucking quiet. He can still feel the not-quite-bruises from when the guys basically climbed on top of him, and all of a sudden he feels a rush of whatever the opposite of claustrophobia is. He aches to be fucking cuddled._ _

__He even gets up, pads to the door, almost leaves to go to one of the other rooms and - and what? Interrupt someone else's sleep? They're safe here, this is the first time any of them has been able to get some sleep without knowing they're going to have to stand a watch in years. Frank can't do that to someone. So he lies back down again, rolls over about seventeen times, heavily and in stages because he's too big now to just turn over in one movement like he used to, and eventually he zones out into something grey and unconscious enough to be like sleep._ _

__When he zones back in, it's to a smell he must be hallucinating. Surely._ _

__'Frankie?' Gerard whispers. Frank is suddenly wide awake and on high alert, struggling to sit up, to throw off the thin scratchy blanket, to find his boots, goddamn, why did he take his fucking boots off- 'Hey, hey, it's okay, Frank, you're okay, it's just me -' and Gerard is kneeling on the floor next to him, touching him, pushing him back against the pillow. 'Shit, sorry,' he says. 'I didn't mean to startle you. I just. Coffee?'_ _

__He picks up a mug from the floor and sort of waves it at Frank. That smell blooms again, dark and rich and impossible._ _

__'They've got everything,' Gerard says, and there's a pinch of anger in his voice, recognisable as the same anger Frank felt when he was poisoning the office supplies, stinging and cold. 'Fucking - everything, Frankie, they stockpiled fucking warehouses full.'_ _

__Frank takes it from him with shaking hands. It's the last thing he needs on top of a night of no sleep - really he should plead insomnia and exhaustion and try to roll back over and sleep, but he can't. He wants the coffee. He wants Gerard to stay. He wants to leave this horrible little cubicle and go back out into the desert again where the sun might be too bright but at least at night he can see the stars and remember there's still something to reach for._ _

__The first sip is … fuck, it's so bitter it makes him shudder all the way down his spine, but he barely takes his mouth away from the rim of the cup, already reaching for another taste, and another, and another. He burns the roof of his mouth, the inside of his gums. He drinks the coffee til it's gone, and then the cup falls away and Gerard is kissing him, pressing him back into the bed._ _

__Frank reaches up to pull him down, take Gerard down with him - and there's a knock, a cough, at the open cubicle-room door._ _

__'Breakfast?' says Pony, one hand on her hip and her eyes averted, looking somewhere off up and to the left._ _

__No, actually, Frank doesn't want breakfast, he wants Gerard and a shower and about a thousand years of sleep, but he lets himself be pulled to his feet anyway._ _

__D collars him after breakfast, and there's no getting out of it this time. 'I'll fuckin' tell your boys on you if you don't behave,' he says, glaring at Frank._ _

__Frank glares right back, but there's no heat in it. He takes his shirt off awkwardly when D gestures like _c'mon, off_ at him, and resists the urge to cross his arms. It wouldn't be helpful. _ _

__D fucks around with a stethoscope (cold) and then kinda uses his hands (less cold, slightly sweaty) to push and pat The Bump a bit, feeling for something Frank doesn't quite understand. He seems pleased with whatever he finds, and the baby - the babies? - start kicking. Then he makes a face and kind of gestures at Frank's chest. 'Can I?' he asks awkwardly._ _

__'You're the doctor,' says Frank._ _

__So he gets pushed at and patted there a bit too, which … is super fucking weird, actually, but again, nothing that makes D make any noises that are worrying._ _

__'You're in good shape, as far as I can tell,' D says at last. 'You can put your shirt back on.'_ _

__Frank shrugs the thing back on over his head and pulls it down as much as he can. It's tight. 'What was all the, like, feeling me up in aid of?' he asks. This time he does cross his arms over his chest._ _

__'Looking for, uh, runaway cell division elsewhere,' D says, shrugging. 'Not like they shot you with a precision baby-making gun. There've been other cases where … fuck. Doesn't matter, for now anyway. You're clear. Get outta here.' He turns around and looks at all his stacks of paperwork still to sort, and sighs._ _

__'You wanna hand?' Frank asks him quietly. It can't be fucking nice, sitting here on your own sorting through finding out what kind of sick experiments they were running._ _

__'Nah, kid,' says D. 'Go find News and ask what she needs doing. This is a one-man job.'_ _

__Frank sits down. 'Bullshit. Pass me that fucking folder and tell me what _you_ need doing, asshole.'_ _

__***_ _

__When Frank does finally get out of the medical office he goes back to the garage. It's quiet down there, it's calm. He knows what he's doing._ _

__He also, and this sounds bad, but he also just … wants to be sure that they have their way out of here ready. Maybe they're reclaiming it, maybe they're helping pull things back from the fire, but Frank can't help thinking of this whole place as a trap, still. So sue him for getting the escape route sorted._ _

__Everywhere he turns he sees former dracs - they're being weaned off their cocktail of compliance drugs, but that's not an exact science and it's not predictable, and fuck, Frank's little back-of-the-brain threat monitor just will not calm the fuck down. Frank's adrenal system is on full time fight-or-flight, and he's not in any condition to do either._ _

__He wants out of here so fucking bad he can taste it._ _

__***_ _

__Gerard finds reasons to put his hands on The Bump about fifty times a day, and keeps stealing Frank away from prying eyes for coffee-flavoured kisses. Well, mostly away from prying eyes. Mikey has a habit of being around in whatever place Gerard finangles Frank into, and sometimes Frank gets a second pair of hands on his hips and a second pair of lips on his neck. Even when he's in the garage, standing on a step-stool and making Ray do the shit he can't wriggle, stretch, bend or lift enough for any more, covered in grease, he doesn't seem to make it more than twenty minutes at a time without being touched, like Ray's just gotta remind himself that Frank's here, and safe, and solid._ _

__Frank's given up asking what the kisses are for. He just takes them, gladly, and clings as hard as he can. He came so close to losing this - losing _them_ \- that sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night with his throat closing up in panic about it. _ _

__Sometimes, like tonight, he wakes up gasping._ _

__His hair is sweat-soaked and he cards a hand through it to get it out of his face, struggling to force his lungs to calm down. He stares at the door to his sleep-cubicle and fights down the urge to slink down the corridor til he finds someone to crawl into bed with._ _

__He doesn't deserve to have comfort, not when half of his nightmare is real. Maybe his boys are all still walking and talking, but they're not the only bodies he dreams up, and the rest of them, they're real, or at least, the reason they're there, the reason Frank sees them, that's real._ _

__No-one's talked to him about the things he did between getting caught and the rest of them breaking in here. He doesn't know if the boys know. He knows News knows, but so far it seems like she's kept that info to her chest, because … because there's no way they could fake it, if they knew what Frank had done, there's no way they could be treating him the way they are if they knew._ _

__He can't even roll over to bury his face in the pillow and scream into it._ _

__He put bleach in the water coolers. He's a fucking monster, and he can't breathe, and no matter how many times he tells himself that his boys are literally just down the corridor, that one of them (he doesn't know which, he hasn't asked) is literally sharing a wall with him in this cubicle farm, his body doesn't believe that they're alive when it can't see them._ _

__He's too hot and this bed is suffocating him. He half-crawls, half-falls out of it onto the floor with a thud. His kneecaps protest, but he shuffles into the far corner of the room and puts his head awkwardly as far between his knees as he can with The Bump in the way, and tries to breathe._ _

__Bleach in the water and poison in the coffee and fucking bombs everywhere he could find to hide them. He still hasn't asked News how many people he took out that way, because he's a fucking coward. His breathing is wet and punctuated by sobs, and he wraps his arms around himself and tries to stifle the noise in his elbow._ _

__He's a fucking monster._ _

__'You're not a monster,' says Mikey in his ear, and Frank startles like he's been shot, but Mikey's stealthed his arms around Frank's ginormous useless carcass and stops him from really moving. 'You're _not_ a monster, Frank, Jesus.'_ _

__'Fuck off,' says Frank, which is the opposite of what he wants._ _

__Mikey hauls him off the floor and gets him back into the bed, which is when Frank realises he's shivering and cold. Mikey bundles him up in the blanket that came with the room and pulls him tight against his bony chest. 'I don't care what you did,' he says. 'None of us do. You did what you had to.'_ _

__'You don't know that.'_ _

__'You act like Ray and Pony didn't have to do a bomb disposal run the day after we got here,' says Mikey flatly. 'We know, Frank. Have you - seriously, did you think we didn't know?'_ _

__'How can you even look at me?' Frank growls, swiping furiously at his face because he's still fucking crying._ _

__'Gerard broke a drac's skull open when we got back that day and you were gone,' says Mikey stonily. 'He got jumped and before Ray or I could do any fucking thing he was smashing its head into that bedframe Ray made. Fuck. It was a mess, Frankie. It was a fucking mess.'_ _

__Frank can imagine. Graphically. He hates himself for that._ _

__'That was -'_ _

__'If you say 'different' I will cut you,' says Mikey in a low voice. 'He thought you were dead.'_ _

__'I thought you were all -'_ _

__'Which is why it isn't different. It's a fucking war, Frank. It … it _was_ a fucking war, anyway.'_ _

__'What is it now?' Frank asks dizzily._ _

__'Fucked if I know,' Mikey says. 'Better, is all.'_ _

__They lie there in the dark and the quiet for a long time, and Frank's breathing eventually starts to come back under control. His head throbs. He buries his face in Mikey's uncomfortable shoulder and lets himself be rocked against Mikey's body._ _

__'Have you even got a single night's sleep since we've been here?' Mikey asks softly._ _

__'Yes,' says Frank, because he has, eventually, slept every night._ _

__Mikey's eyes narrow. Frank can't see them but he can hear it when Mikey says, 'have you got a single _full_ night's sleep since we've been here?'_ _

__Frank doesn't answer. Mikey sighs. 'And it didn't occur to you to come ask for help?'_ _

__'What, you can magically cure insomnia now, Mikeyway?'_ _

__'Don't be a fucking asshole. You know you sleep better when you're sleeping with someone.'_ _

__Frank doesn't answer that either, he just. Doesn't know if he wishes Mikey and the others didn't know him so well, or if he's pathetically fucking grateful that they do._ _

__Mikey slides further down the bed til he can get his head on the thin pillow. Frank slides with him, stays curled up against his chest, arms knotted between them and feet tangled with Mikey's, but he starts to twitch after a while, and Mikey rolls him over and spoons him like an octopus. 'Also, fuckface, none of the rest of us sleep that good alone either,' he mutters into Frank's ear._ _

__Frank's already mostly asleep._ _

__***_ _

__'It's not a good idea,' says News. She folds her arms across her chest. 'I can't tell you how stable people are out there. It's a volatile situation, and we're doing our best to keep things on an even keel, but the entire populace is suffering the equivalent of a very nasty comedown off a very bad trip, and frankly I would prefer if you didn't go out there and add an extra variable to the situation. Fights break out over the smallest of things.'_ _

__'I want. To go. For a walk,' says Frank. 'It's very simple. I haven't seen sky in a month and I'm going fucking stir-crazy, News. Please.'_ _

__She stares at him. He stares right the fuck back. Eventually she sighs. 'Take someone with you,' she says. 'Don't go far. Don't stay out long. Don't talk to anyone.'_ _

__'Fine.'_ _

__'Fine.'_ _

__Frank's triumphant exit from the room is less impressive because it's basically a waddle, but he holds his chin up and powers through it. He just wants to fucking see the sun, that's all. He wants to breath non-recycled air, even if it's full of dust and crap. He wants to at least see other humans, even if he's not talking to them._ _

__This fucking regeneration he's being promised, he wants some fucking evidence. They could still be being Nineteen Eighty Four'ed over here, and he wouldn't even know it. He _needs_ , on some visceral level, deep in his gut, to see that there's change happening._ _

__And yeah, right at bottom, he just wants to see the sun._ _

__He wants to go alone, but he can compromise._ _

__'Hey, Frankie, what's up?' Ray asks, when Frank finally finds him, tinkering in the garage. He straightens up from whatever birdsnest of wires he's been playing with. 'You need me for something?'_ _

__Frank resists the urge to just go and put his arms around him and demand the kind of bear-hug he used to get on stage, the sort that feel like _home_ with Ray pulling Frank's head down to his chest and mussing his hair. Instead he says, 'I wanna go for a walk. You keen?'_ _

__'Yeah, sure.' Ray grins at him like Frank's promised him some kind of actual treat._ _

__The warmth outside is like a solid wall. Frank could swear his knees buckle when the door opens and suddenly, that violent, unstopping heat. But the sky's blue, actual blue overhead, even if the horizon is still an orange haze. Frank takes in a lungful of the practically solid atmosphere, and doesn't regret his choices one fucking bit._ _

__There are people in the streets. They're dressed in mostly BL gear, but it's now how Frank remembers it looking - no-one's wearing it like a uniform any more, and there's … colour. Some of it's stains, true, but some of it's deliberate. The atmosphere around them isn't uniform, either. The city isn't an ant farm any more - it's an ant heap, full of scuttling chaos and yelling and a hundred thousand crisscrossing paths again. It feels actually like a fucking city._ _

__Frank thinks, reflexively, the tail end of a very old kneejerk sense-memory, that he fucking hates LA, and then snorts, because Battery City isn't LA, but if it makes him feel like it is then maybe, just fucking maybe, News's ambitions might get somewhere._ _

__'We going anywhere in particular?' Ray asks. He's stopped at a crosswalk, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand and looking around. 'I dunno what the sights are any more.'_ _

__'I just wanted to stretch my legs,' says Frank. 'Take a look around, y'know?'_ _

__Ray nods. 'Let's do a loop, then,' he says, and takes off down a side street. Frank can't quite keep up, what with all the extra weight he's carrying, and it takes about five steps for Ray to notice and slow back down to his pace. Stupid long legs. Fifteen years ago Frank would have fucking climbed him and taken a piggy-back ride in retaliation, but yeah, that ain't happening any more._ _

__They take a moderately slow turn around three corners of the block that the old BL\ind tower dominates one edge of. Frank's ankles are sore and it is motherfucking _hot_ out here but he'll take it, okay, he'll take it over recyc air any day. Soon they're gonna get out of this gross, airless hellhole into the proper desert again, where maybe it's hot but occasionally the atmosphere does stir with a breeze and it doesn't smell of shit and sweat and garbage. He can't wait. _ _

__They round the last corner, though, and someone grabs Frank by the arm, hard._ _

__'Shit -' Frank jerks back, but the grip doesn't loosen, and he's frantically casting around for a weapon, a gun, a fucking _rock to brain them with_ \- when Ray gently pries the fingers open and pulls Frank behind him so the grabber can't get at him again. _ _

__It's - Jesus Christ, it's a little kid._ _

__Frank's throwing up in the shadow of BL\ind tower when Ray catches up with him. He doesn't say a word, just crouches and pulls Frank's hair out of his way (too little, too late), and lets Frank lean into him while he hurls up the contents of his guts and the Bump helps by kicking up a storm._ _

__'Let's get you inside,' says Ray, when Frank's run out of even bile to upchuck, and is shaking too hard to shrug him off._ _

__'Don't fucking say anything,' Frank says to him when it seems like he's opening his mouth to make some told-you-so comment. Frank's throat is raw and bitter-tasting. 'Just … just don't say anything.'_ _

__'Wasn't gonna,' says Ray softly, steering Frank along corridors and into the elevator. 'Frank, c'mon, like I would.'_ _

__And yeah, okay. Frank lets Ray take his weight, but as soon as they get near his cubicle he pushes away. 'I just … I need a nap, maybe,' he says, and there's no way in the entire world Ray believes him but he catches at Frank's wrist to pull him close enough to kiss his temple, then lets him go._ _

__'Sure thing, Frankie,' he says. 'You want me to come get you for lunch?'_ _

__'If you desperately want another pile of vomit to clean up, go ahead,' says Frank._ _

__Ray rolls his eyes. 'Go sleep, asshole. Try and get up on the right side of the bed this time.'_ _

__Frank loves Ray kind of a lot._ _

__He bundles himself under his blanket after he's closed the door and Ray's footsteps down the echoey corridor have died away, and he doesn't exactly sleep but he does doze, do that greyscale almost-sleep thing where you're sure you're not conscious but when you do wake up finally it's as disorientating as if you'd passed out. There's a funny taste in his mouth._ _

__His belly hurts, like a cramp. Maybe that's what woke him up. As he's trying to process it, another wave of clenching, involuntary pain rolls over him. He bites down on his lip to stop himself from making a noise._ _

__Gerard's sitting on the floor beside the bed. Frank looks blearily down, tasting the iron edge of blood in his mouth, and sees the crown of his head, his epic, greasy regrowth. He's reading an old, beaten-up paperback novel. The shit that's coming out of lock-up now that News is in charge is unreal. He looks up when Frank groans and attempts to sit up, and reaches up to help steady him._ _

__'You feeling okay?'_ _

__The twisting in Frank's gut starts again. 'I. No,' he grits out, and Gerard's on the bed next to him in a second, wrapping an arm around him._ _

__'Tell me where it hurts,' he says, and Frank can't breathe, so he just grabs Gerard's hand and puts it flat, low down on his belly._ _

__'Shit,' says Gerard. 'I'll get D.'_ _

__When Frank falls back against the pallet mattress, he sort of passes out, staring at the cover of Gerard's tossed-aside book._ _

__It's _Nineteen Eighty Four_._ _

__***_ _

__' - still, Fun Ghoul -'_ _

__'It's … Frank, his name's Frank,' someone's saying and Frank's head lolls towards the sound, seeking._ _

__His body explodes in pain as he moves and then there's pressure on his shoulders._ _

__D says, 'Stay still, Frank,' and the name sounds so weird in his voice. So weird. But Frank can't move. His eyes are sticky, they won't open properly._ _

__'Shhh,' says someone else, closer. 'Frank. You awake?'_ _

__'Hurts,' he says thickly._ _

__'Yeah I know, buddy,' says D. 'Was hoping it was just trapped gas and melodrama, but your rugrats had other ideas. Gonna get 'em outta you, okay?'_ _

__'Shouldn't he be anaesthetised?' asks … Gerard, Frank realises, high pitched and wavering. 'You need to -'_ _

__'You need to get out,' says a third voice, warm and dangerous. Pony, Frank decides. It's Pony. She's holding his hand, he also realises. 'He needs to stay calm, and you're not exactly calm, Party Poison. Go find the other two.'_ _

__'Fuck you,' says Gerard. 'I'm not going anywhere.'_ _

__Frank manages to ungum his eyes enough to open them in time to see D wheeling across the room to pin Gerard into a corner and say something to him in a low voice that makes Gerard's already huge eyes widen even further. He looks across at Frank, and bites his lip, and nods._ _

__Pony strokes Frank's hand. His brain is fuzzing in and out with every breath, and his eyelids are heavy._ _

__Gerard comes back with D, and leans down to press a kiss to Frank's forehead, stroke the hair off it. 'I can't - it's not a good idea for me to be here,' he says._ _

__Frank makes a noise in his throat, strains after Gerard when he pulls back, and fuck, that _hurts_. Gerard winces in sympathy and pets him again. 'Gee -'_ _

__'I need you to get through this,' Gerard whispers at him fiercely. 'I need you to have the best fucking chance you can have, and that means no distractions, for you or for D. Okay?'_ _

__Frank tries to clutch at him, but he can't move any more. 'Gee, no.'_ _

__'You know what I'm like about this shit,' Gerard says, kissing him again. 'Frankie, I'm a wuss and you know it.'_ _

__Frank leans his forehead against Gerard's and tries to breathe against the hitching stitch in his abdomen. 'Better be here after,' he says._ _

__D's futzing around with something, in the corner, and when he comes over again it's with a syringe. Frank shudders - Gerard goes white. 'I will,' he says. 'I swear, Frank. I'll be right outside the door, and as soon as they let me back in I'll be here. We'll all be here.'_ _

__D swabs the crook of Frank's elbow. 'Get out,' Frank says fuzzily, swatting at Gerard. 'Bring me pizza,' which … he's aware that that makes no fucking sense but his brain isn't quite lining up right, right now._ _

__Gerard's expression somehow softens even further. _Love you_ he mouths at Frank as he's backpedalling out._ _

__Show Pony shuts the door in his face._ _

__Frank blinks. Breathes. Looks up at the ceiling as D murmurs, 'there you go, kiddo,' and the cold steel of the needle slides back out of him. 'Keep breathing, there we are,' and everything's soft, somehow. The pain's still the pain but he's … he's not there all the way to feel it._ _

__'Should I push?' he asks muzzily, because. That's what you do, right? Babies? Coming? You push?_ _

__D pushes him to lie down flat with one very warm and kinda sweaty, sticky-tacky hand on his forehead. 'Fuck no,' he says. 'What are you gonna push with?'_ _

__Frank snorts and then regrets it, the lance of pain that streaks low down through his belly, his tired, overstrained abdominals. 'How're we -'_ _

__'Go to sleep, Fun- Frank. Okay? We talked about this, yeah?' D kind of strokes Frank's hair off his face. 'We talked about this. I'm gonna do a C-section. Remember? And you're -'_ _

__'Gonna sleep,' says Frank, because he does, fuck. He does remember. He does. It's okay._ _

__He hurts so much, rolling cramps, twisting muscles, kicking and kicking and kicking. But it's okay. It's gonna be okay._ _

__He breathes. His abdomen burns like he took a hit from a truck. And slowly, in pieces, he blacks out._ _

__***_ _

__He blacks in to hear crying, a high, terrifying wailing that does something unspeakable to his brain, like a buzzsaw. He has to - to get up, to make it stop, to help - and he tries to roll over and realises two things in very quick succession._ _

__One: he's not the size of a hippopotamus any more but also two: he can't move._ _

__'Figured you might try that,' says Pony, from somewhere above him. She leans down. There's something in her arms. Something like a blanket, with a tiny pink fist sticking out of it, waving aimlessly._ _

__'Did -' holy fuck Frank's mouth is dry. He tries to work some moisture into it, staring at the bundle Pony's holding. 'Did you fuckers tie me up?'_ _

__'Tied you down, technically,' she says. 'And your boys did it, not me. I'm the innocent bystander in all this, Fun Ghoul.'_ _

__'Sorry, Frankie,' says Gerard. Frank's head snaps up - they're on the other side of the room, all of them, huddled around another bundle, which is the source of the noise. 'We uh - we were worried that you -'_ _

__'- stop it, you're scaring her,' Frank realises Mikey's saying to Ray, who's jiggling the noisy bundle and looking traumatised. 'Just gimme -'_ _

__'- we didn't want you to like, burst your stitches, or -'_ _

__'Give me my fucking babies,' says Frank, pulling at the … zipties? Jesus fuck … that they've looped around his wrists. 'Or I won't be held responsible for my actions.'_ _

__Pony juggles the (quiet, calm) baby she's holding to one arm and pulls out a butterfly knife. She slits Frank's restraints and helps him to sit up, wiggling her ass onto the mattress so she can support his weight, and then sliding the baby into his arms. 'Here's one of them,' she says. 'Careful, she's like, full of formula, she might spit up on you.'_ _

__Christ, Frank's belly hurts._ _

__'Oh -' says Mikey from the other side of the room in what sounds like dawning realisation, and then there's a very quiet but very gross noise._ _

__'Oh Jesus,' says Ray in a high-pitched, reproachful tone. 'Mikey, goddammit.'_ _

__Frank's too busy looking at his daughter to really pay much attention to the others until someone slides the second little girl into his arms as well, making him juggle them into the crooks of his elbows and like, really? The human body was not actually meant to hold two babies at once but Frank will _cut_ anyone who tries to take them away. _ _

__'She was sick on me,' says Ray. 'And somehow I don't care.' There's a note of … wonderment or something in his voice that Frank will remember later and tease him about but right now all he can think is that he knows exactly how Ray feels and he hasn't even been sicked up on yet._ _

__The mattress dips again. Frank's hands feel too cold against the tiny feet nudged up against his palms, he worries that his arms aren't broad enough to keep the little bodies curled in them stable against his sore, aching torso. He shivers._ _

__Another set of shoulders nudges against his. Someone slides behind him and before he knows what's happening Frank's being eased back against a solid, warm body._ _

__'We got you,' says Gerard against his ear. Mikey rests his bony face against Frank's shoulder and helps support the left-hand baby. Frank finally looks up and Ray's trying to wipe his shirt down, but he meets Frank's eye and smiles._ _

__Gerard kisses Frank's cheek._ _

__Frank's head is a little spinny still, but suddenly he isn't cold, and he isn't scared any more._ _

__('I'll go see about more formula,' says Pony.)_ _

__***_ _

___Epilogue_ _ _

__'Y'know, this still gets me,' says Frank, lying back on the Trans Am's hood and staring up at the sky, the sunset that's bleeding lavender-pink. Just on the edge of his hearing, Ray's picking softly at guitar strings, and that still gets him too, that they have a fucking guitar again, but some things he doesn't dare question in case they disappear._ _

__'What does?' Gerard asks, balancing himself on the fender. 'The fact that we gave up civilisation to raise children out of a car?' He's a little sore about the whole coffee rationing thing, now that they have access to coffee again. 'The fact that we're back to reading the labels on cans to make sure you don't die from too much human food?'_ _

__'No, dickface, this,' Frank gestures up at the sky. 'Look how fucking clear it is.'_ _

__There are stars prickling through, is Frank's point. Ray's playing _Romance_ and the stars are out and he'd thought the bombs burned everything beautiful in the world away, but now everywhere he looks, he sees the pollution sloughing away, new growth coming through._ _

__Gerard hitches himself up onto the car. 'I'm still not over _that_ ,' he says, and Frank looks at him to see that he's nodding at Mikey, sitting by the campfire with two bottles of formula, a baby in his arms and the other swaddled in blankets in his lap, and a dopey smile on his face. _ _

__'Yeah. That's pretty cute,' Frank will allow, because it is._ _

__Gerard reaches out and pulls Frank's hand out of the cross of forearms across his chest, and pets their fingertips together. 'Never thought you'd get these back, either,' he says softly. Frank can feel the shivery roughness of the places they touch, but he can't feel his fingertips._ _

__The breeze picking up around them, though, and the silky cooling of the air as the sun goes down, and the soft, hungry kiss Gerard leans up to give him, though? The way his heartrate leans into it, and the way it tastes of precious coffee and maybe just a little, finally, of hope?_ _

__Frank feels that._ _


End file.
